In the hollow of His hand

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CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

GIFT OF
Mrs, Frank Morse

Cornell University Library
BR121 .T83

In the hollow of His hand.

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3 1924 029 237 223

Cornell University
Library

The original of tiiis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

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IN THE HOLLOW
^Z HIS HAND

RALPH WALDO TRINE

NEW YORK

DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY

220 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET

Copyright, IQIJ
By Ralph Waldo Trine

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

Foreword

5

I. Things as They Are and the Temper of

Our Time 15

II. The Present Demand to Know the Truth,
and the Earnest Quest for a Religion
that Relates Itself Intimately to Pres-
ent Every-day Life • • . • 35

III. The Thought, the Existing Conditions,

and the Religion of Jesus' Time 46

IV. What Jesus Realised, Revealed, and

Taught as Gained from a Direct Study
of His Own Life and Teachings, Un-
trammelled by Tradition or by "Author-
ity" ■ . . 62

V. His Relations with the Father— Human
or Divine? What He Says Regarding
This, and of His Unusual Insight and
Powers: His Teaching Regarding All
Others in this Connection ... 81

VI. Jesus' Teachings Regarding Sin and "The
Sinner" and God's Attitude To-
wards Them: Did He Teach the De-
pravity — the Fall — of Man, or the
Essential Divinity of Man? . . . 102

VII, Jesus' Own Statement of the Essence of
Religion— His Own Designation of the
Heart of Christianity .... 121
3

4 CONTENTS

Chapter Page

VIII. Was the Church Sanctioned or Estab-
lished by Jesus and Is It of Major or of
Minor Importance? — Is there Some-
thing more Important that He Enjoined? 154

IX. Our Debt to the Prophets of Israel: As
the Divine Voice Spoke to and Through
Them so It Speaks To-day . 183

X. A Fuller Realisation and Use of the
Eternal Power Within that Brings
Peace and Power and Wise Direction 191

XI. A Statement of Jesus' Christianisra in
Terms of Present-day Life and Prob-
lems 202

XII. The Power, the Beauty, and the Sus-
taining Peace that the New Meaning
of Christianity Imparts to Life . 229

FOREWORD

Men and women the world over, in these
days of independent searching thought and of
tremendous readjustments, are longing for the
essentials of a religion that relates itself inti-
mately and effectively to the problems and
to the affairs of every-day life. The desire in
all human problems and relations to know that
underneath are the Everlasting Arms, is well-
nigh universal.

It is indeed a world crisis that we are in
along many lines of thought and of human ac-
tivity. In addition to the on-sweeping Democ-
racy in this readjustment time, there is in the
realm of religion of Christendom a casting off
of many things that through the avenues of
myth, tradition, speculation, and " authority "
found their way into our present system of
organized Christianity — some with their roots
running back even to pre-historic times — and
all formulated for us by pre-mediaeval minds,
on pre-mediasval knowledge.

Through a wonderfully enlarged knowledge
of early beginnings, ecclesiastical and dog-
matic Christianity that has failed and at times
so pitiably failed to relate itself to the crying
5

6 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

needs of every-day life, is being thrust into the
background by great hosts of earnest and God-
aspiring men and women. Freed from the bias
of traditional speculations about the Christ,
and likewise from the bias of " authority," they
are finding that the teachings of the Christ
formulate a religion, and cast into the simplest
of terms, if we do not persist in complexing it,
that constitutes a veritable moulding force in
all the affairs of the daily life, and an effective
guiding force in connection with all human
relations.

Great and rapidly-increasing numbers in our
own and in other countries, who are through
with the old ecclesiasticism of authority with
its dogmas of the inherent sinfulness and
degradation of man, whose soul it is the busi-
ness of religion to save by some un-understood
atoning force, with its emphasis on the nega-
tives of life, which induce always fear and lack
of faith and therefore crippled energies for
mind, body, and spirit, are realising and realis-
ing keenly the great loss they have sustained
through the old emphasis in religion. They
are now finding that to know God, whom the
Christ revealed, gives a religion of a joyous,
conquering power by virtue of the Divine pow-
ers and forces, eternally latent within, spring-
ing forward into a useful and ever-growing
activity.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 7

The Divinity of human nature with its il-
limitable possibilities and powers that Jesus
exemplified, and unfolded, and taught, is, they
are finding, a radically different thing from
the bewildering and enervating series of specu-
lations about him upon which our organized
Christianity was built and which remains sub-
stantially its basis to-day. In their passing
from the old emphasis to the new, they have
exchanged the fears and forebodings that were
essential concomitants of their former sense of
degradation and weakness, for faith and hope
and courage — the natural attendants of the
Divine self-realization that Jesus so insistently
taught; they have exchanged weakness and
impotence for a renewed vigor of mind, body,
and spirit; they have exchanged fear and even
a dread of the future, for a sustaining peace
that makes the present complete, and that go-
ing on before brings back assurance of what
the future shall be.

The spirit of the Christ is moving in a won-
derful manner in the minds and the hearts of
men at this present time. Dissatisfied with
the barrenness and the inadequacy of what
Ithey have been taught as religion in its bear-
ings upon the actual problems and activities
of life, they are no longer afraid to think, to
question, to investigate, and to exchange half-
truths for the newer, fuller truths that the

8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

Divine urge makes essential in connection with
all effective and satisfactory living.

Science and a vastly enlarged knowledge
over those of centuries ago, brings us word
that back of the universe, sustaining and con-
tinually building in the universe, and in this
our world, are God's eternal and unchangeable
laws in all their varied forms. To search out,
to know, and intelligently to work in conjunc-
tion with them, is to work always along the
lines of effectual accomplishment. The "su-
pernatural," the " miraculous," even the " in-
scrutable ways of Providence," as such, dis-
appear before an enlarged knowledge. They
were resorted to by earlier men by way of
explanations, because they knew no bet-
ter, though strange to say in religion we
still follow their guidance and accept their
conclusions — some, in fact many do, even
yet.

Back of and working continually in and
through the human will is the Divine will.
God is spirit, said the Christ — not a spirit,
which is now known to be a faulty translation
of the Greek— but God is spirit. God is that
spirit of Infinite Life and Power that is back
of all, working in and through all, the essential
life and force in all. To realise the essential
oneness of our lives with this Spirit of all Life
and all Power, to think and to act always from

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 9

this conscious Centre, is to grow in the realisa-
tion and in the appropriation of an ever-
greatening degree of Divine guidance and
power. To know God whom the Christ re-
vealed, is to come into an ever-enlarging
knowledge of the Divine laws and forces that
are at work in our lives and in the universe
about us.

We can find no evidence that is at all trust-
worthy, certainly no evidence from any of
Jesus' own words or teachings, that any un-
usual powers that he exercised were not in
accordance with God's established laws.
There is evidence pointing to the fact that
he had a comprehension of laws vastly supe-
rior to those of his time.

To increase the knowledge of men as to
their higher possibilities and powers by reveal-
ing to them their true identity in the life of
God, seemed to be his continual effort. " I
am come a light into the world, that whosoever
believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
And if any man hear my words, and believe
not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge
the world, but to save the world." His reali-
sation of the oneness of his life with the life
of God — with the Father as he chose to put
it — was so natural and so complete that he
stands supremely among all teachers as the
revealer of God to man — ^veritably the Way,

10 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the Truth, and the Life. " Believest thou not,"
he said, "that I am in the Father, and the
Father in me? The words that I speak unto
you I speak not of myself, but the Father that
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe
me that I am in the Father and the Father in
me; or else believe me for the very work's
sake." And continuing immediately he said:
" He that believeth on me the works that I
do shall he do also; and greater works than
these shall he do." If the Christ actually
meant what- he said, the sooner we act upon
his own teachings the better for us, if we actu-
ally believe in him as a teacher and a revealer
of the highest truth.

If we are lovers of the life, the spirit, and
the teachings of the Christ, we become doers
of the word and not hearers only; and if we
become doers, then through the natural opera-
tion of the laws that he enunciated we enter
upon a life of far more joyous and effective ac-
tivities. If we substitute or permit, through
ignorance or through weakness, to be substi-
tuted for us, an organization, a book, or any
one or all of the almost innumerable theo-
logical speculations of Ecclesiasticism about
the Christ, the result is confusion, uncertainty,
dissension, many times disaster.

The age, whatever we may hear said, is not
irreligious. It is supremely, we might almost

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND ii

say, interested in religion. There never has
been, perhaps, a greater desire, or rather a
more universal desire, to live life from its
Centre, and to build and to rule one's world
from that Centre. But the intelligence of the
age is demanding a complete and thorough
separation of the wheat from the chaff. It is
demanding that ancient groups of men's the-
orizings about the Christ and theorizings about
God and man that are distinctly contrary to
the teachings of the Christ, be now pushed
into the background, that the teachings of the
Christ in connection with a more joyous and
a more effective way of living, and in connec-
tion with the lifting up and the actual Chris-
tianizing of all human relations, may assume
the ascendency. The call, nay the demand of
the times, is insistent and is becoming well-
nigh universal.

The very purpose of Christianity is changing
— it is changing from an agency whose reason
for being and whose purpose has been pri-
marily to save men's souls from bell, real or
mythical or both, to an agency whose reason
for being and whose purpose is to inspire and
to direct men so that their lives do not here
get into a state of hell. In other words, it is
no longer regarded by thinking and knowing
men and women as a mere creeping-through
agency, but as a constructive and building

12 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

force in their daily lives. They are also firm
in their conviction, through their knowledge of
the workings of the elemental law of Cause
and Effect, that the one who knows God here
and gives evidence that he knows him by an
upright, manly, loving, serviceable mode of
living, will be known by God both here and
hereafter. They are also sustained in their
conviction because this is the essential teach-
ing of the Christ, who has led them into the
knowledge of the Way, and who traversed it
before he taught it. With such a one, receiv-
ing directly from the Master a knowledge
of the great spiritual verities of life, and
whose constant prayer is — Uphold me, O
God, by Thy free Spirit— "the hitting of a
sawdust trail " becomes a most immaterial
matter.

Christianity at the present time is being
judged throughout the world, and will be
judged for some years in the future, not by its
beliefs, but by its works. Men will be drawn
to it in overwhelming numbers and will give
it allegiance, when it has sufficient value, in
use, to give to them.

Any agency, any book that can help con-
structively to point the way to the end that
a more simple, a more vital, and a more rea-
sonable religion may take form in the lives of
earnest, forward-looking men and women to-

IN THK HOLLOW OF HIS HAND . 13

day, is serving no ill-purpose — there is a like-
lihood indeed of its filling a very wide and
genuine want.

Sunnybrae Farm, R. W. T,

Croton-on-the-Hudson, N. Y.,
September i, 1915.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS
HAND

THINGS AS THEY ARE AND THE TEMPER
OF OUR TIME

That there is an inspiration and a power in
the Christianism of the Christ, infinitely beyond
the tenets of our prevailing organised Chris-
tianity, is becoming the priceless possession of
great multitudes of men and women to-day.
Many have suspected and they are now con-
vinced that the emphasis given by the early
Fathers and the Councils of pre-mediaeval
times, in their almost infinite theories and
speculations about the Christ, have produced
a barrenness in Christianity that must now be
replaced by a study into and a far greater ap-
propriation of the teachings of the Christ.

That great multitudes of clear-thinking and
God-aspiring men and women of the present
time, since the element of fear and that of the
IS

i6 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

taboo have both lost their hold, are tired of
and will have nothing further to do with the
old emphasis, is evident on every hand. They
are not only longing to know, but are demand-
ing to know, the truth, and all signs are indi-
cating that they are finding it. A sickly ob-
scurantism that has in the past made so many
satisfied with the un-understood, has a place
no longer in their lives. Not to know the great
floods of light that many fields of investigation
during the past few years have thrown upon
early beginnings, is regarded now as no mark
of Christian obedience or loyalty, but rather as
a mark of moral cowardice, if indeed it is not
that of downright stupidity.

No one in the world's history has ever
spoken more strongly perhaps against the
dead formulations of an established ecclesi-
astical order. Whose activities were expended
in preserving the authority of the past, instead
of leading men to an ever-increasing knowl-
edge of God's life in the soul, of God's laws,
and of the forces through which they are con-
tinually working, than did the Christ. No
one, moreover, we may be sure, would speak
more strongly against the same agencies
among us that would keep the Divine vision,
and voice and guidance, away from the active,
throbbing life of the present. Little less might
we expect from him who said: And ye shall

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 17

know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free. And again: I am come that ye might
have life and that ye might have it more
abundantly.

We do not now hesitate to point to certain
weaknesses of Christianity. Millions of men
and women are now realising its weaknesses.
The stupendous and thoroughly unchristian
world's war among Christian nations has
aided in that. The work of all real and for-
ward-looking Christian men and women is
now to find the way out.

A tremendous sifting process is now on,
and men and women are everywhere engaged
in separating the essential from the unessen-
tial, the valuable and the usable from the in-
consequential. They are believing and are
finding that religion, and above all the religion
of the Christ, is something that relates itself
intimately and fundamentally to the minutest
affairs of the daily life. They are finding that
it contains an inspiration and a force that can
be appropriated and that can be infused into
and made to mould the every-day conditions
of life — not something to be accepted on au-
thority as something to be believed about its
Founder.

It is no longer, to flee the wrath to come.
It is to lift up and to make fit, useful, and
valuable, the life that now is, which will lead

i8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

naturally and in accordance with Divine laws
to the life to come. Its emphasis is on faith
in the Divine Life and Power that will lead
us, and will impart to us the light and the
energy to travel more and more unto the per-
fect day.

The old emphasis was on faith, first, we
might almost say, in our inherent sinfulness
and degradation, brought about by the
mythical sinfulness and degradation by those
thousands of years, but as science has now
demonstrated, millions of years, before our
time. Second, faith in some un-understood
atoning method — administered through a close
corporation — to save us from the results of
these sins of others, that God — as a monster —
saw fit to inflict upon us. Only those in whom
the force of superstition and fear still works,
or on whom the voodoo can still be used, or
those who through these agencies can still be
worked for money, or who through the plea of
Christian loyalty can be prevailed upon to help
preserve the "faith once delivered," — these
combined with that great company of those
who haven't thought much about it, who
haven't taken the trouble to acquaint them-
selves with early beginnings, and with present-
day findings regarding them, are longer giv-
ing allegiance to the old emphasis.

The " faith once delivered," we are now find-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 19

ing, had nothing to do with the teachings of
Christ that had to do primarily with the every-
day life. As finally formulated in the various
Council proceedings and creed-making bodies,
they were not even the expressions of the
consensus of opinion, and therefore of a
unanimity of belief relative to the Christ.
They were the points of difference that, in their
almost infinite speculations aiout the Christ,
they were finally able to bind together and
come out of their various wrangles with.
Many of these Council meetings of the early
Fathers, and still more, many of the early
Church Councils, were marked by intrigue,
treachery, a scheming for preference and for
power, the very antithesis of the Christ's own
teachings, as can be learned by any one who
is interested sufficiently to acquaint himself
with untouched accounts of the proceedings.
It was at the time that Christianity was
annexed by Rome, and beginning with the
formation of the Nicene Creed in 325, when
in attempting to formulate it, she began to
weave into it many of her intricate systems
of metaphysical speculations, and many of
her pagan rites, and imposed upon it, that it
might awe and attract the populace, many of
her state forms and ceremonials and equip-
ments, that the emphasis was shifted from
the teachings of Jesus in their relation to life.

20 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

to something that must be believed about him;
by authority of the Councils and later of the
Church.

A new time at last has appeared, and out of
this bewildering and befogging mass of early
theories and speculations about the Christ,
there is coming a religion of an immensely
greater vitality and power, as is gained from
an intelligent study and appropriation of the
fundamental truths that were so simply and
so clearly taught by the Christ from those
clear Judaean hills so many years ago. It is
therefore no longer a belief or a reverence of
any statement about Jesus, or a belief in Jesus,
that constitutes a force for righteous, unselfish,
and therefore successful living. Any one of
the most ordinary intelligence believes in
Jesus. It is the comprehension and the using
of the simple but fundamental laws of living
that he perceived, lived, and set forth, that con-
stitutes the mightiest driving force in life that
we yet know.

The almost startling fact of the essential
oneness of the human with the Divine, was
the realisation and the teaching of Jesus. That
the Divine works in and through the human
in the degree that we are able in our own lives
to realise it as the Source of our strength, and
the Essence of our lives, and to give allegiance
and therefore potency to no other power —

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 21

such is the revelation and the message that
distinguishes him as a teacher above all others.

Renan in his " Life of Jesus " has so truly
said : " The highest consciousness of God that
ever existed in the breast of humanity was that
of Jesus." As was said some years ago by
one of the most highly illumined preachers and
writers that our country has known*: "The
central point of our existence is divine, and
God is incarnated in the whole of humanity,
but men have not known this and perceived it,
as did Jesus of Nazareth. With him it was not
a theory, a speculation, an hypothesis, but an
intense consciousness, a living verity and real-
ity. From this divine depth of his being, he
spake and acted, oftentimes losing sight of
the human element in his complex nature, and
he stood forth before the people as the God-
Man and the Man-God. . . . Consciously
united to God, the Central Life, and with all
the powers of universal nature, what could he
not accomplish? "

And said that great German philosopher
Fichte : " An insight into the absolute unity
of the human existence with the Divine is cer-
tainly the profoundest knowledge that man
can obtain. Before Jesus, this knowledge had
nowhere existed; and since his time, we may
say down even to the present day, it has been

* Dr. Warren Felt Evans, in " Soul and Body."

22 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

again as good as routed out and lost, at least
in profane literature." And again : " God
enters into us in his actual, true, and imme-
diate life, — or, to express it more strictly, we
ourselves are this, his immediate Life."

Expressed in perhaps somewhat different
terms, it is likewise the essential iasis of all
modern idealistic philosophy.*

Nowhere can we find from Jesus' own teach-
ings that he claimed for himself anything that
he claimed not for all mankind. Nor could it
be otherwise if God is God and Law is Law.
There is, of course, a difference — ^but it is a
difference in capacity of realisation, and as to
how fully one, in his inner consciousness and
in the whole outward expression of his life, is
capable of trusting, and through his love and
his will, is ready to trust himself to the Divine
Law. Completely and with all humility, Jesus
did this. A sense of dependence upon the
Divine guidance and power gives that appro-
priate humility which is always combined in

* It is likewise the basis — this recovery of the essen-
tial content of Jesus' revelation and mission — of the wide-
spread New-thought movement, ^which originated some
few years ago in America and which is spreading all over
the world, with an enormous and a rapidly increasing
number of adherents. It is likewise the essential basis of
the Christian Science movement, whose centres and
whose churches are likewise growing with marked
bounds throughout the world.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 23

those of real wisdom and power. It is a part
of their life ; it is indeed a part of their power.

In all his thought and in all his acts Jesxis
gave allegiance and acknowledgment to this
guidance and power — Of myself I can do noth-
ing; it is the Father that worketh in me.
"Why callest thou me good? none is good,
save one, that is, God." " Call no man your
father upon the earth : for one is your Father,
which is in Heaven." Said a noted English
minister in a Glasgow pulpit within the last
month : " Strangest of all religious paradoxes,
surely, is this, that he who succeeded in reveal-
ing God most clearly unto men, should have
been made by the men to whom he revealed
him the means of his most effective eclipse ! "

One of the great forces in constructive
philosophy and religion of to-day, Rudolf
Eucken, has recently published, " Can We Still
Be Christians ? " His reply in substance is
that we not only can but we must be if we
would actualise the highest in life and in civili-
sation. It must, however, be not the Chris-
tianity of the creeds and the dogmas of the
past; it must be the Christianity of the Gali-
lean Christ, in its constructive relation to in-
dividual, social, national, and international life.

Through this new emphasis a new Chris-
tianity is now being born. It is breaking into
our churches from the outside. Forward-look-

24 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

ing men in our churches are preaching it from
the inside with a power and a persuasiveness
that is showing them to be prophets instead of
merely priests. They are no longer bound by
the theory that the task of theology is the
preservation of the " truth once delivered."
Their knowledge of what was finally decided
to be delivered, and the way it was delivered,
makes them have not quite the sense of duty
of conserving it that those before them had.
One result is that the members of these bodies
are no longer among those

" Dropping buckets into empty wells.
And growing old in drawing nothing up."

Thinking men and women, then, are too
much in earnest regarding life and its prob-
lems; they are too eager to understand and
to appropriate the real vital truths of religion
for use in their every-day lives, to be interested
now in the relics of bygone ages. They are
now asking and they are seeking earnestly to
know, through their own understanding and
interpretation, what the real facts regarding
the life and the teachings of Jesus, the Christ,
were and are. What was the secret of that
wonderful life of such marvellous insight and
power, of such perennial influence? What did
he perceive, what did he live, and what did he

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 25

teach that is of value to me here to-day? What
that I can appropriate and make use of in my
daily life? What that is of value to my sons
and daughters, for they are still less satisfied
with the things of the past than I?

Another striking characteristic of our time
must be borne in mind. Jesus is too large a
character, his life and his teachings are
fraught with too great a value to all people,
the serving of needs too momentous, to allow
them to remain longer the sole possession of
any organisation or any organisations. The
greater laity has finally recognised this and is
insisting upon the rights of its own findings
and interpretations, and of the great personal
and community advantages flowing there-
from.

The results of the patient and disinterested
studies and investigations of various noted
scholars and groups of scholars of various
countries during the past few years, have put
into the hands of the layman a great amount
of material pertaining to the final selection of
the present books of the Bible from among a
much larger amount of material to be selected
from, the authorship of the various books, the
religious beliefs and the prevailing institu-
tions of Jesus' time, his own life and his own
teachings, the early Church of the disciples,
and the great departure from this early Chris-

26 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

tianity when the present Church began to take
form in Rome in the fourth century.

In America we know that a great activity
is on in this direction, and we have many evi-
dences that it is likewise on in many other
countries. So many times during the past few
years, it has been asked: Why is it that in
America our churches haven't a larger attend-
ance of men? The answer is probably to be
found in the fact that the American man is in-
terested primarily in things of use, in things
that can be made of use — ^he with James is
primarily a pragmatist. For some time he has
been asking regarding Christianity — Will it
work? Can it be made to work?

He is convinced now of the wonderful spirit,
the conquering power that shot through and
permeated the early Christianity of the first
three centuries. He is determined to master
all things through understanding. He is de-
termined to know through What agencies this
was lost — why the results are so small to-day
when the possibilities are so great. He is not
going to be satisfied with half-truths when
he can dig down and know the truth. He is
not going to be satisfied with anything built
primarily upon speculation and upon ancient
theories now discarded in all other realms of
knowledge, or even with explanations through
"miracle" or through the "supernatural,"

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 27

when 1500 years of advancement gives a won-
derfully expanded knowledge of God's Laws
and of the Divine forces working continually
in the world and in human lives.

So he believes that Christianity — at least
the Christianity of the Christ — will work, and
he is determined to dig down and find how it
can be made to work. He recalls that astron-
omy was at one time under the wing — the
smothering wing — of the Church. He recalls
that later science was wholly within the do-
main of the Church; that then politics and
statecraft were joined with it — and with what
awful results for those countries in incessant
turmoil and conflict, and in the degradation of
such large masses of the people.

America stands in a unique position among
the nations of the world at the present time.
If she is true to her great opportunities, she
will have a great part to play in the great
reconstruction process that will take place, and
for a considerable time, after the great World
Crisis, and after the forces of suspicion, hatred,
and revenge have spent themselves. Great re-
ligious and ethical ideas and ideals will be the
chief agencies in this reconstruction — and
whatever men may say or think, the rule of the
Christ, battling with the rule of brutal indi-
vidualism, suspicion, jealousy, and hatred, will
take a tremendous stride forward, and will

28 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

prove itself to be the mighty moulding force
in the shaping of the new conditions. This is
a great privilege, then, of the men and women
of America.

We must be on the elert, however. We must
be fully awake, for there are forces at work
abroad that are fast unchaining men's minds
and that are giving a new courage to the heart.
The following recent utterance is not that of
a leader of any radical institution or church
organisation. It is that of a free, untram-
melled spirit of the Established Church of
England.*

Speaking of the conditions to follow the
war he says : " Every one is agreed that vast
changes are inevitable in social, economic, and
political affairs. May it not be, then, that pro-
found modifications will take place in religious
thought also? that one result of the world-
wide conflict will be a wider realisation of the
things that really matter in religion? The fur-
nace-fire of war will burn up much of the wood,
hay, and stubble which we have built on the
foundation of Christ. Many of us, in the con-
fusion of this bewildering upheaval, are already
thinking more of the Sermon on the Mount
and less of the Athanasian Creed. For, after
all, we say within ourselves, of what avail will

* Rev. A. T. Bannister, M.A., Canon Residentiary of
Hereford Cathedral.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 29

be our fiUoque clauses and our homoousicm
orthodoxy, when Christ asks us Christian
teachers why, after two thousand years of our
ministry among men, we are still so far from
persuading the peoples of the world into
peace? It seems to me that, for religiously-
minded men, the one all-important result of the
war must be a new estimate of values as re-
gards theology in its relation to religion, and
a new and more insistent effort to define this
latter term.

" Now when men are plunged into the wild
chaos of a time like this, they begin distress-
fully to feel that dogma has somehow emptied
their religion of its moral interior, has robbed
it of its moral code. Hence I think we shall
find, after the war, that religion, though more
passionately held, will sit more loosely to
theology, whether of the institutional, intel-
lectual, or mystical school. The Church will
become in fact what in idea it already is, a
society of men banded together by a common
faith in God, and witnessing to a moral and
spiritual ideal of life based upon the principles
of love and self-sacrifice revealed in Christ
and inspired by His Spirit. It will, speaking
broadly, substitute religion for theology and
metaphysic; it will take for its text-book the
Sermon on the Mount instead of the Epistles
of St. Paul; it will aim at the coming of the

30 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

Kingdom rather than the progress of the
Church, We have most of us got into a habit
of mind which all unconsciously identifies the
Kingdom of God with the Church. Hence-
forth we shEdl recognise that the Kingdom of
God, both in fact and in idea, is far wider than
any or all of the Churches.

"They (the people) will listen to us, as
they listened to our Lord, when we honestly
get to close quarters with the living subject,
when we remember that it is to the office of
a prophet that we clergy are called, as cer-
tainly as was that herdsman who followed his
flock in Tekoa. It is unworthy of us to be
content with the work, ceremonial, customary,
almost menial, of the sacrificing priests of
Israel. We are called to higher things. The
ministry of the Church is not a kind of cere-
monial magic, not the repeating of a certain
form of words, not the killing of a sheep, the
swinging of a censer, the elevating of a
chalice. No mind is needed for these things,
no inspiration, no intelligence. The ministry
of the Church means piloting the teeming,
many-sided life around us over an unknown sea
to a land which God will show. And if we are
to accomplish this mission, the ship must not
be piloted by antiquarians, or by metaphysi-
cians, nor yet by mere ecclesiastics, but by
prophets—' men of hope and forward-reaching

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 31

mind,' who will set their face to the future
irather than to the past. What we shall need
after the war is international Christianity, civic
Christianity, political Christianity, which is a
very different thing from ecclesiastical poli-
tics."

Everything about us gives unmistakable
evidence that the best thought of the age is
converging to the point that the Christianity
of the Christ has but little to do with any
speculations or any formulations of the past;
but that it is all the time taking form as Jesus
himself epitomised it — Love to God, and love
to man. Simple to state, but locked up within
them the mightiest force for the uplifting and
the glorifying of the individual life, and for
the remoulding and the higher consummation
of all human relations that we have yet known.
The redeemed Christianity relates to the whole
man — mind, body, and soul — not to any mythi-
cal saving of the soul merely; the soul needs
saving only when the mind and the body work
wrong.

And so intelligent men and women who
know the never-failing Law of Cause and
Effect, and who see it as one of God's im-
mutable and never to be evaded laws, are
interested primarily in a means of salvation
here and now — which incidentally will take
care of all salvation hereafter. One of the

32 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

great truths that we are in possession of in
this twentieth century is that man can co-
operate with God to an hitherto undreamed-of
degree, and in the degree in which he does, do
the higher powers and forces co-operate with
him in all his activities, and make accom-
plishment doubly sure and of the kind that is
abundantly safe and permanent.

Christianity must interest itself, as Jesus en-
joined upon it and as he interested himself, in
saving bodies as well as souls, in making the
daily life that now is, more hopeful, and
buoyant, and happy, and strong. In our re-
covery of the essential content of the religion of
the Christ, we will find it not merely a method
of escape from the ills and the trials of this
life, nor a method of escape from the " wrath
to come"; not merely a solace in earthly in-
firmities and troubles, nor merely an avenue
of Divine sympathy for us in these. The re-
ligion of the Christ is not a religion of mere
negation, it is a religion with a positive build-
ing force in the daily life, arid the above are
but incidents that are contained, all contained,
in an infinitely greater content.

To know God whom the Christ revealed, and
to know him in the manner as by him re-
vealed, is to become happy and strong in the
conscious actualising of the Divine leadings
and forces and powers that are potential within

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 33

US, but that the Christ revealed and explicitly
enjoined upon us to realise and use. And so
intelligent men and women of to-day are find-
ing that to attempt to encompass the life, the
teachings, and therefore the religion of the
Christ, in cut and dried formulas, to weave
them into a crown and to press them upon
men's brows, is the very antithesis of the
Christ. They now see all too clearly that
through this method a Christianity primarily
of negation was made to take the place of a
religion of faith and courage and of joyous
conquering power — a religion of wholeness and
of abounding health of mind, body, and spirit.
So men and women who can look bigly and
kindly at many of the things in our organised
Christianity of to-day, things that they feel are
keeping the truer and the more vital and the
more wholesome portions of the Christianity
of the Christ away from the people, are recog-
nising them as pertaining to the old and now
creaking stairway up which we have slowly
climbed. They are, on the other hand however,
recognising that it is but well and healthy, in-
deed essential, for all men — in church and out
of church — to become acquainted with early
beginnings, with pre-mediaeval tamperings and
speculations and teachings about the Christ,
which remain essentially dominant to this day,
in order that the far more valuable thing, the

34 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

teachings and the gospel of the Christ, may
again gain the ascendency, and do for hunger-
ing and thirsting men what the Christ so ex-
plicitly said they would do.

At this present time the spirit of the Christ
is moving in a wonderful manner in the minds
and hearts of men everywhere. Jesus is com-
ing to his own again, and the great laity of
the world is having its part, in conjunction with
the forward-looking men in all our churches,
in the great redeeming process that is now in
progress. We are in the midst, whether we
are yet fully able to grasp it or not, of another
great Reformation, no less real, no less gigantic
than any that has gone before, and more tre-
mendously far-reaching. It is but the fore-
runner of a great spiritual — Christian, if you
please — Renaissance, that will resemble more
than anything else the times of the Early
Christianity — but with a vastly enlsirged vision
and knowledge and influence.

II

THE PRESENT DEMAND TO KNOW THE
TRUTH, AND THE EARNEST QUEST FOR
A RELIGION THAT RELATES IT-
SELF INTIMATELY TO PRESENT
EVERY-DAY LIFE

It was on a train in Montana that a promi-
nent and wealthy Western man, returning
home from the East, met an old friend. During
their conversation they fell into a very earnest
discussion of religion — of Christianity and the
Church, as is so often the case at this present
time. He finally said to his friend, with an
earnestness that bespoke the intense longing of
his heart as well as of his mind: "Well, I
would willingly give half of all I possess at
this moment to know the truth. I would like
to believe more of it, but I simply can't do it."

There are thousands, there are thousands of
thousands in exactly the same condition to-
day, both in our churches — Protestant and
Catholic — as well as outside of them. There is
also the vast army of young men and women
entering now upon the stage of action, in ex-
3S

36 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

actly the same mental status and with the same
longings.

I was sitting with a group of men in the
office of a little Inn down in the lower end of
the Blue Ridge Mountains a few days ago.
They were all Northern people. One of the
company was speaking of a friend, a noted
financier and man of large affairs, and of his
great interest in and his earnest inquiries and
studies into matters pertaining to religion.
He concluded by saying : " Our ablest and
biggest men seem to be interested in these mat-
ters almost more than anything else." We are
coming to realise that the Judasan Teacher
knew full well whereof he spoke when he said :
" Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God."

There is at the present time a tremendous
interest in all matters pertaining to religion,
and there is a great questioning and readjust-
ment all along the lines of organised Chris-
tianity, not only among us but throughout the
entire world. Mighty changes in thought and
in religious concepts are now taking place.
Untold numbers have arrived and still greater
numbers are continually arriving at the cross-
roads of thought and of action. The old shells
are breaking and things can never again be as
they have been.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 37

So many agencies have combined during the
past fifty years or so in throwing such floods of
light upon early beginnings, that vast multi-
tudes are now having their questionings and
their suspicions confirmed, that our prevailing
Christianity has been after all too much the
formulation of traditions, early speculations
and beliefs, and therefore dogmas aiout the
Christ, instead of the vitalising, life-directing
truths as so simply and so clearly enunciated
ly him. To cast the former aside or to push
them so completely into the background that
Jesus' own redeeming and vitalising truth may
gain the ascendency and dominate the thought,
inspire the spirit, and therefore direct the life,
is now becoming the reality of this our day.

There is a power here, increasing numbers
are finding, which, when adequately grasped,
realised, and used, will lift up and will intensify
the power of the individual life to an hitherto
undreamed-of degree. When moreover it be-
comes sufficiently the controlling impulse and
power in individual lives, it will completely
remould all human relations — community, na-
tional, and international.

The great world war — almost unbelievable
and so essentially unnecessary had we lived
our Christianity instead of speculating pri-
marily about its Founder — is significant of
mighty changes taking place along many lines

38 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

of thought and of world activity. In no realm
perhaps is this more evident than in the realm
of religion, except it may be in the realm of an
increasingly awakened and an increasingly on-
sweeping Democracy.

Has Christianity failed? We have heard it
asked repeatedly. The consensus of opinion
among thinking men and women is : No, Chris-
tianity has not failed, but ecclesiasticism has
all but failed. Way back 1900 years ago was
one whose teachings, if made uppermost and
therefore if actually followed, would have led
us long before this past the time when the
inexcusable, brutal, senseless slaughters, and
the worse than brutal waste of the results of
men's labours that is fresh among us, would
have been a thing of the past.

We cannot from the facts that are now be-
fore us conclude otherwise than that the es-
sentials of his teachings and revelations, and
therefore the real vital purpose and power of
his mission, got relegated to a position of but
minor importance and in many respects com-
pletely thrust into the background, by the
preponderance that was given to a system of
bewildering and befogging and therefore ener-
vating theories about him. The results have
been so thoroughly unsatisfactory that the men
and women of thought and of real religious
aspiration are crying — Enough; I will hence-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 39

forth follow the life and the teachings of the
Christ as I can read and interpret them for my-
self ; it cannot be that he intended otherwise-
he who cried: "Why judge ye not even of
yourselves what is right? "

Jesus did not teach a system — ^he taught no
system at all — or anything that can be legiti-
mately transformed into a system that would
do violence to men's — good men's — ^reason, or
that could be organised to serve the purposes
of either greed for power or greed for gain.

Personally I believe, and I stand squarely
upon the belief, that the great life-moulding
principles and truths that Jesus so unerringly
perceived, lived, and taught — of man's wonder-
ful access to God the Father, and of the mystic
force that relates and unites them, and of the
transforming and redeeming, and more, the
huilding power of love, are so much greater
and so infinitely more valuable than the ec-
clesiastical dogmas that grew up about his
person, that I rejoice to see the falling away of
the latter whereby the ground is being made
less encumbered and made ready for the essen-
tial truths that will yet redeem men and women
to their higher, diviner selves, and through
them will yet redeem the world.

Jesus did not teach that God is a monster,
and therefore its concomitant, the inherent sin-
fulness and degradation of man and of human

40 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

nature. He perceived unerringly, he lived and
he taught — Our Father in Heaven, the unity
of the human spirit with the Divine. It was
therefore the Divinity of Man, made actual in
the degree that man lifts his mind and his spirit
up to the Divine and lives in this realisation —
with all the transcendent and transforming in-
sights and powers and the enfolding peace that
will follow, and follow inevitably, in its train.

There is a tremendous interest and enthusi-
asm in the quest of this new emphasis in re-
ligion to-day, and thanks to the great sifting
process that is now thoroug'hly manifest and
that is finally eliminating completely for
many, those things that have done violence to
human reason. If one gets Jesus' great funda-
mental he can rest at ease and drive com-
pletely from his mind and interest the incon-
sequentials, all things foreign thereto — the
remnants of a pre-mediaeval age, once a help
perhaps, but now a hindrance. In doing this
he steps at once into the goodly company of
the great prophets and the great mystics of all
the ages.

I do not undervalue the past — it holds the
stairs up which we have climbed. But we
must remember that we have climbed, and
that the voice of God and every law of God is
continually to climb on. We must remember
that the higher scholarship in its free and

IN THE. HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 41

wnbiased, investigations in connection with the
various books of the Bible, the revelations of
archaeological activities, a marvellously ad-
vancing science, and the natiural course of
evolution during 1500 years, have advanced us
considerably beyond the age of myth, and of
superstition.

All this has given us a range of knowledge
and knowledge of a universe infinity beyond
those who in the fourth and several succeed-
ing centuries formed our prevailing system of
Christianity. It has changed some of course,
but fundamentally it is the same as formed or
rather as formulated by those whose total
knowledge of the universe was a flat earth
with its pile of seven heavens one above the
other, and whose successors fought almost
with the desperation of madmen to prevent
"restless spirits and impious heretics" such
as Copernicus, GalileO', Kepler, and others,
from upsetting the revealed rule and the order
of God's universe with their silly fancies.
"Not to throw Christ's Kingdom into con-
fusion with his silly fancies," was one of the
early warnings of Christ's vicars and God's
custodians to Kepler.

God didn't seem, however, to have too ortho-
dox a respect for their systems or for their
authority, for he has raised up innumerable
fearless investigators and great scientists who

42 . IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

have dared to announce new discoveries and
who have helped to lead us on to our present,
but not yet ended, knowledge of the universe
and of God's laws and forces that rule and
that work continually and unerringly therein.
It is from these that we take our science and
our continually broadening knowledge, rather
than from those of the time of the Church
Fathers who formulated their crude, neces-
sarily crude, and many times erroneous sys-
tems, and then endeavoured to stifle with the
anathema, with excommunication, with death
here and damnation hereafter — "eternally,
never-ending, forever and forever " — ^those who
were impious enough to question, and not to
remain satisfied with the truth as "handed
down by authority."

We take neither our science nor hardly any-
thing else from the latter ; but by some strange
force or freak of human nature, we have been
taking from them our religion, or rather our
formulation of Christianity, and it has occurred
to us only of late years to recognise and to
examine into the stupid folly of it, as well as
the great loss we sustain through it. A mighty
change is in evidence in Christendom now,
however.

In our Theological Schools a new and dis-
tinctive note is at last sounding. The follow-
ing by a noted professor of Christian theology

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 43

in one of our leading universities is signifi-
cant : * " Seldom is a generation called upon to
face such radical readjustments of thought as
confront men to-day who are trying honestly
to do their duty in the field of Christian the-
ology." After speaking, then, of the prevail-
ing methods of the past, he continues : " Within
the past fifteen or twenty years, however, a
revolution in method has taken place, and to-
day the best theological seminaries are confi-
dently and aggressively undertaking construc-
tive work with principles and methods which
were formerly dreaded, because of their ' de-
structive ' tendencies. There is in vogue to-
day a ' new ' theology, which has passed the
stage of timid and apologetic beginnings, and
which is contributing in ever-increasing meas-
ure to the religious life of our day. . . .

" Modern theologians are not concerned
primarily with theological systems. They are
rather concerned with the failure of traditional
theology to answer satisfactorily certain press-
ing questions which modern men are asking.
Something is wrong with the method. . . .
The significant movements in modern theology
are not so much attempts to revise the con-
tent of doctrine as they are attempts to dis-
cover a method which shall be convincing.

* Gerald Birney Smith, Professor of Christian The-
ology, the University of Chicago.

44 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

Men want to be satisfied that they are in pos-
session of a way of inquiry which will lead
them to know the truth. Revision of content
is secondary to this primary problem.

" One should realise that theology to-day is
passing through the same reconstruction of
method which has taken place in practically
all branches of human learning. To-day we
feel that the method of studying the facts be-
fore us is in every way better than the method
of appeal to authority. We want the truth,
not mere authorised doctrine. Because our re-
ligious welfare is so closely bound up with
theological beliefs, we are naturally extremely
sensitive to proposed changes. We are prone
to continue to feel that some ' authoritative '
basis for theology is essential, even when we
have really adopted a genuinely empirical
way of asking questions. The time has come,
however, when we ought squarely to face the
question whether we are allowing the empirical
method to have credit for what it is really
doing. Are we not in danger to-day of trying
to save the form of conformity to authority,
when we ought rather to be disclosing the
religious value of a fearless, open-minded quest
for the truth? The latter position would align
theology with the great constructive forces of
the modern world."

Ecclesiastical Christianity of the "author-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 45

ity " type, men and women of thought and of
the higher aspiration are now finding, is but
a crude thing, compared to the life-ennobling
and the life-moulding teachings, and therefore
the Christianity of the Christ. Out of it a new
Christianity is now evolving incomparably
truer and stronger and therefore more usable,
one that is already becoming a real directing
and building force in men's and women's lives
as well as a source of infinite joy. The whole
world of thinking and truth-loving men and
women sire becoming enlisted in its further-
ance.

It holds a tremendous hope for the immedi-
ate future of Christianity. It holds a tremen-
dous hope for a more vital and a more Christ-
like individual, national, and international life.

Ill

THE THOUGHT, THE EXISTING CONDI-
TIONS, AND THE RELIGION OF
JESUS' TIME

We have spoken of the great interest there is
to-day in religion, not only in our own country
but throughout the world. With us it is natu-
rally an interest in Christianity. Because we
were born and bred in this religion, we natu-
rally feel it to be the truest and the most
valuable.

No man can be adequately understood apart
from his time and his people. In order that
men and women of twentieth-century minds
and knowledge and habits may get a knowl-
edge of the teachings of Jesus and of the
Christianity of his time, a certain knowledge
of his time, its conditions, and its people is
essential. It is essential that we may the more
intelligently distinguish between his own sim-
ple hillside teachings, and the strange theories
and inventions about him woven by men of
fourth-century minds.

Were one aiming to deal with " The Funda-
mentals of Christianity," he would now find it
46

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 47

a difficult task. He would ask if it were the
Christianity represented by the Greek Catholic,
the Roman Catholic, or the Protestant system.
Again, he would ask if it were the Christianity
as given forth in those simple, direct, open-
air, hillside teachings of the Judaean Carpenter
that moved men with such a wonderful spirit ;
or the Christianity of the Apostolic Age, still
simple and drawing in its effects upon men ; or
this same general system when it was annexed
by Rome the Conqueror in the fourth and fifth
centuries, and when she imposed upon it many
of her own elaborate state ceremonials and
systems, and many of her own pagan rites ; or
the Christianity of the period of the Reforma-
tion ; or if the Christianity of a later period of
the Protestant form, which one of the upwards
of two hundred varieties, denominations, or
sects is meant.

Peoples or nations stand generally as em-
bodiments of some particular trait, or charac-
teristic, or power, or line of development. Im-
mediately concerning us are chiefly the Roman
and the Jewish nations. Rome stood primarily
as a nation of organisation. She developed and
gave also to the world its most noted systems
of law. She was also a great military nation,
and practically conquered the world, such as it
then was — principally the nations lying around
the Mediterranean. Many nations paid tribute

48 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

to her. Hundreds of thousands of men and
women were captured and carried off into
slavery by her at the conclusions of her various
campaigns, which later, however, developed
almost entirely into raids for plunder. Her
successes, her purely pagan outlook, the ex-
cesses and later the debauchery of her rulers
and governing classes, finally brought her to
her decline. About the beginning of the Chris-
tian era, she was already in her degenerate
stage.

The Jewish nation for many centuries had
been a God-loving and God-fearing people.
She stood for the development of religion, as
no nation before her, and it is quite safe to
say as no nation since her time, had stood.
Many great prophets had arisen in her midst
from generation to generation. She evolved, as
no nation up to her time had evolved, the idea
of one God — ^Jehovah. Gradually a fixed sys-
tem of religion — an elaborate, ecclesiastical
system — took form, which killed the real spirit
of religion which she formerly had. Bishops,
priests, and ecclesiastics had come to take the
place almost entirely of her former prophets.
Religion came to be an inert, dead, lifeless sys-
tem, primarily of form and ceremony. It was
an Oriental nation, given to Oriental forms
of expression, abounding in symbolism, as is
readily seen in the various books of the Old

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 49

Testament, which is primarily a history of the
growth, the ideals, and the Ufe of the early
Hebrew people.

She was at this time also under the domina-
tion of Roman rule. The Roman representa-
tive or ruler in Judasa was Pontius Pilate. He
and his sub-officers ruled, as Roman represen-
tatives ruled, with an iron hand in a soft glove.
He collected regular tribute from the people,
and when the needs of Rome on account
of greater expenses and excesses were greater,
he collected more tribute. Expeditions were
sent to Judaea from time to time and thousands
of its citizens were carried away to be sold as
slaves in Rome. There was a general feeling
of uncertainty, of unrest, and at times bitter-
ness, although the true feelings were generally
held in sufficient check. There was a prophecy,
a tradition, an expectation, which now became
very great and general, that a Deliverer would
be sent to them. The coming of the Messiah
was now almost momentarily expected by
them.

In the year 28 or 29 A.D., there came one
John— John the Baptist — proclaiming to the
people — Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
his paths straight. And again— Repent ye, for
the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

He was earnest, zealous, and persuasive.
There is a tradition that Moses later came as

50 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

Elijah and that Elijah in turn came later as
John — this John the Baptist. This is specula-
tion, however, of which we know nothing. He
preached the coming of the kingdom with
power and persuasiveness, and many came to
him to be baptised in the River Jordan, fol-
lowing a certain Jewish custom that had been
in existence for a long time. Among others
came Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and
Mary, to be baptised of John; though later in
his own ministry we have no accounts that
he himself baptised. He seems to have ac-
cepted this rite at the hands of John as the
beginning, the initiation of his own public
ministry.

He was one with a great aptitude for the
things of the spirit. His father, Joseph, was a
journeyman, a carpenter. He and his wife,
Mary, were people in very modest circum-
stances but of a very high type of life. Jesus
had four brothers and several sisters, he being
the eldest. He was regarded by all of his own
time as the son of Joseph and of Mary, and
no attempt was made to give him, and no sug-
gestion was ever heard as to, any other type of
parentage until a long time after his death
and chiefly the early part of the fourth century
when Rome began, after annexing Christianity,
to formulate and build an extensive and com-
plex system of dogma, creed, and ceremonial

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 51

upon it. In this process the Church Councils
began to promulgate various things and theo-
ries regarding Jesus, of which he, his own
disciples, and the people of the early Church
up to that time had known nothing.

Jesus as a boy went to school as did the neigh-
bours' children. He learned his own language,
the Aramaic. We know practically nothing of
him, then, until at the time he comes to John,
except one meagre account of him at the age of
twelve we have, when he appears in the Temple
before the doctors and the learned men of the
Hebrew doctrines. We then have the account
of his asking and answering questions of a
type that would give the suggestion of his be-
ing one possessing unusual insight and wis-
dom for one of his age. The same account we
have of Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, also
at the same age, when he appears in the Temple
before the wise men, and we are told : " He
replied to all the questions of the sages; but
when he questioned them, even the wisest
among them were silenced."

From the age of twelve to between twenty-
nine and thirty, we have no accounts whatever
of the life of Jesus. We are told that he fol-
lowed the trade of his father, that of a car-
penter, and worked with him. There is a tradi-
tion, which seems in some respects plausible,
that being interested in the develojjment of the

52 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

inner, spiritual life, he went, when a very
young man, with a caravan, one of the numer-
ous ones that passed regularly on one of the
direct highways to India, and there gave years
of study with a brotherhood in one of the old
monasteries, in the development of the inner
life and powers.

At his home the three principal sects were
the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes.
The latter were given to a study of these same
things ; they were quiet in their lives, keeping
their teachings from the general public as
much as possible, and it may be that he re-
ceived much of his unusual spiritual insight
and knowledge of life under their instruction.
Again, it may be that an unusual — indeed, a
supreme — aptitude for the things of the Spirit
accounts for his unique and wonderful insight
into life and its forces, the same as the unusual
aptitude for music produces now and then a
great and marked musician; or for mathe-
matics, a great mathematician; or for thought,
imagery and expression, a great poet. He
shares with his people the hope of a Messiah.
He believes also with them that the end of
the world or the end of the age is soon coming,
and that it may be even accomplished during
the lifetime of some then living.

Now Jesus speaks. What has he to tell?
What to teach? Does he bring to us any au-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 53

thentic accounts of the life beyond, that which
mankind would so eagerly know? Does he
throw any distinct light upon the problem of
good and evil? There are many subjects of
which we wish he had spoken, but of which he
remained silent.

But he does teach doctrines so new, so star-
tlingly new, or teaches with such a new and dif-
ferent emphasis upon the old doctrines, and in
such a simple and straightforward manner,
that he appeals at once and evidently with
great power to those who sat around him and
who listened to his words. He speaks, we are
told, as " one having authority." Indeed, this
is a characteristic of his teaching or ministry
that attracted the throngs to him, that made
them marvel at his method. Their own
teachers spoke always on the authority of
others — " It is written," " The Prophets have
said." He did not frequent, except occasion-
ally, the ordinary places of worship, but he
chose the open places, the hillsides, the green
plot along the lake-side, the open air. He al-
ways spoke so plainly that even a child could
understand. His illustrations, taking many
times the form of parables, were, always in
terms of the common life that all were familiar
with.

It should be noted here, that for the Jews
there was one God, Jehovah. The Romans

54 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

had various gods — all pagan peoples had. Fre-
quently, a great commander or a great ruler
was deified and made a god. The same as
later on, under the Romanised Christianity, a
prominent prelate or bishop was made, after
death, a saint, by some Council proceedings.

The God of the Jews, however, was the God
of the Jews alone, not of the Gentiles, or of any
other nation or people. They were therefore
the chosen people of God — chosen because they
said they were, the same as some branches of
the Christian Church later on claimed and even
piously proclaimed that they were God's sole
representatives — Christ's vicars on the earth,
that they alone held the keys of Heaven. So,
with the Jews, God was a purely tribal God.

But the ministry of the Judaean Carpenter is
now on in earnest. Jesus taught — from the
very beginning to the end of his ministry —
not only the unity tut the universal Father-
hood of God. He proclaimed immediately with
it, then, the universal Brotherhood of Man. As
a great scholar has said : " This is the end of
tribalism, the inauguration of humanity. God,
it is said in the Acts, has made all nations of
one blood to dwell together on the face of the
earth. Here is a revolution greater than any
political or social revolution in history. In the
Greek or Latin writers, you may find faint
breathings of a common humanity; you will

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 55

find no recognition of universal brotherhood."
Jesus' great fundamental teaching — the Fa-
therhood of God — was at heart a great spiritual
truth. He proclaimed immediately with it
and as if a part of it, as we have just said, the
universal brotherhood of man.

This was hardly necessary, for when we once
take the care to ascertain exactly what Jesus'
conception and teaching of God was, we see
that given the one, the other must necessarily
follow. He evidently wanted, though, to take
no chances of being misunderstood, as he found
he was so often misunderstood even by his dis-
ciples. The Fatherhood of God means, accord-
ing to Jesus' teachings, as I hope we shall soon
clearly see, the Divine Sonship of man, and
from the Sonship flows the inevitable Brother-
hood.

In order that we may get some greater evi-
dences of certainty that this was Jesus' primal
or fundamental teaching, upon which he was
desirous that everything else rest, let us note
the following. One day when he was teach-
ing a group around him, numerous questions
were asked him. We are told that then a cer-
tain lawyer arose. A lawyer was a scribe, or
an interpreter and teacher of the Ecclesiastical
Law and observances. His question was:
" Master, which is the great commandment in
the law? " Jesus said unto him, " Thou shalt

56 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This
is the first and great commandment. And the
second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. On these two command-
ments hang all the law and the prophets."
How truly fundamental this becomes of Jesus'
purpose, mission, and teachings when coupled
with the announcement : " Think not that I am
come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am
not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

Says one of the noted scholars of the cen-
tury, • Goldwin Smith : " Let the creed, the
liturgy, the fane, the ecclesiastical order be
what they may, the universal Fatherhood of
God, which implies God's eternal care for us
now and forever, and the universal brotherhood
of man, are the essence and the sum of all re-
ligion. If we have ceased to believe in them,
the end of religion has come. We cannot go
back to the Pantheon; and the religion of
humanity without a God, to which we are in-
vited to go forward, though it may be an en-
thusiasm, is not a religion at all."

Search as I will, I cannot conclude otherwise
than that he is right. The great trend of
thought in this direction, on the part of think-
ing men and women the world over, is also
to my mind a fact of tremendous significance.

Lincoln, who was unquestionably one of the

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 57

most profoundly religious men our country
has known, one of the greatest of Christians,
although a member of no church, on being
asked Why he did not unite with some church
organisation, replied : " Because I find difficulty
in giving my assent, without mental reserva-
tion, to the complicated statements of Chris-
tian doctrine which constitute their articles of
belief and confessions of faith.

" When any church will inscribe over its
altar, as its sole qualification of membership,
the Saviour's condensed statement of the sub-
stance of both law and gospel : Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy
neighbour as thyself, that church shall I join
with all my heart and soul."

"On religious matters he thought deeply,"
says Lamon, " and his opinions were positive.
He was by nature religious, full of religious
sentiment. He had a sagacity almost in-
stinctive in sifting the false from the true. He
was ever seeking the right, the real, and the
true."

Now in order that this great fundamental of
Jesus be something of real significance to us in
a concrete manner, and in order that it may do
for us what Jesus distinctly says it will do for
all who grasp its significance and appropriate
its truth, what, let us inquire, was his teaching

S8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

of God? His own words are — " God is spirit "
— not that God is a spirit, which is now known
to be a faulty translation of the Greek, but,
" God is spirit," Being, Life, — the Spirit of
Life projecting Itself into existence in varied
forms. The Spirit of Infinite Power and Love.
The Divine Essence, the Animating Force, the
Essential Life of all — the Life, therefore, of our
life, our very life itself. How truly, then, " In
Him we live and move and have our being."
Truly and wondrously it is Emmanuel — God
in us.

As we connect ourselves through a vital, liv-
ing realisation — ^which must come through the
channel of the mind and then reach down
through the whole inner being — with this Life,
we then become channels through which the
Divine Energy and Life manifests and works.
When we do this — I do not speak a fancy —
we come then into the Christ-consciousness,
truly sons of God and brothers in Christ.
" Christ is the name of sonship-:— God, in us.
Jesus personally expressed that relation, su-
premely, ideally."

Vitally and fully to realise this fact, is to
realise the fact that we are spiritual beings,
manifesting while in this material world
through a material body ; and in proportion as
we live in this thought and this realisation, do
the intuitions, the powers, and the forces of the

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 59

spiritual world become the springs of thought
and of action, and I may say of accomplish-
ment, in every phase of our lives.

Truly then, as a noted writer has said : " The
living Christ is within men, and upon invita-
tion the Divine touches the human."

In this way we come to have dominion over
the forces and conditions of the body and over
material conditions in the degree that we grow
to the full stature and use of this great mystic
realisation. This is Jesus' direct teaching. It
was Dr. W. F. Evans, in that splendid book,
"The Divine Law of Cure," who said: "A
union with God, which brings our conscious-
ness of individuality down to the lowest point,
and makes God the All in All, as exhibited in
the life of Jesus, who could say, ' I and my
Father are one,' is the highest condition of life
and blessedness."

Jesus' great ideal, that he taught in season
and out of season, is the Kingdom of God or
of Heaven, upon the transcendent gains and
the transcendent blessedness of which he, we
might almost say, continually dwells. " Seek ye
first the kingdom of God and his righteous-
ness, and all these things shall be added unto
you." And immediately he adds : " Neither
shall they say, 'Lo here,' or 'Lo there,' for,
behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
Combining his great fundamental with his

6o IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

great ideal, can anything be plainer as to what
his aim and his mission really was?

The son of Joseph and Mary, through his
supreme aptitude for the things of the Spirit,
realised, as no one before and no one since has
realised, that there is an insurgence of the
Divine in and through the human, when the
human, through desire and through will, meets
the conditions whereby this can become a
reality.

The Divine Wisdom and Power works in
and through the human in the degree that the
human in consciousness realises its true
Reality, and so meets the conditions whereby
this can come about. It is, so to speak, rightly
to connect one's self with the great reservoir of
Life. A plant, deriving its sustenance from
the soil, cannot have this connection broken
or materially interfered with, and maintain an
ideal growth and form, if indeed it continue to
live at all. Man cannot fail to make and to
keep his right relations with the true source
of his life, unless it be with the result of a
mere physical existence, uncertain, weak, and
dwarfed, and piteously below his possibilities.

We will eventually find that the "fall of
man" consists in his failture to realise his es-
sential and true identity. The atonement is
the enthronement of the Christ within. It was
through his supreme knowledge and wisdom

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 61

of the Divine that the son of Joseph and Mary
became the Christ. He thus became the Sa-
viour of men by pointing out to man the
great thing needful to be saved, and to bring
him thereby into right relations with the true
Source and reality of his being — " my Father
and your Father," as he so distinctly stated it.

IV

WHAT JESUS REALISED, REVEALED, AND

TAUGHT AS GAINED FROM A DIRECT

STUDY OF HIS OWN LIFE AND

TEACHINGS, UNTRAMMELLED

BY TRADITION OR BY

"AUTHORITY"

If the mission or the teachings of Jesus were
dependent upon any one, or upon any par-
ticular saying of his, it would be absolutely
impossible to-day to tell with any degree of
certainty what his mission, or what his teach-
ing was. He was the culmination of a long
and historic line of prophets. Although his
own work was primarily that of a prophet, so
unique and so transcendent was it that he is
more than a prophet.

Jesus reduced nothing to writing; all was
given through the uttered word and the active
life. The earliest record that we have, that
contained in the Gospel of Mark, was reduced
from hearsay and tradition to written form,
between thirty and forty years after he had
finished his work here. The other Gospels,
two of which had their foundation to a great
62

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 63

extent from Mark's Gospel, followed along a
number of years later. The Gospel of John
was written the early part of the second cen-
tury.

The difficulty among us of recording ac-
curately the words of any one, spoken thirty
to forty years before, or with the likelihood of
their being received as at all authoritative on
the part of intelligent, thinking people, is ap-
parent to all. Especially is this true when the
recorded saying was not heard by the one
recording it, but came through the report of
another or of others.

Jesus spoke in his own language, the
Aramaic; the Gospels were all written in
Greek, and not an especially high order of
Greek as is now well known.

Another great difficulty that Jesus experi-
enced was the tendency on the part of his
hearers to drag down his sayings by purely
material interpretations. So far ahead of his
time was he, that they seemed incapable of
perceiving and grasping the great spiritual
content of those teachings that have made him
the supreme teacher of all time. This was
the tendency always on the part of his disciples
also. Continually he was rebuking them for
it. We might almost say that it was the great
tragedy of his life.

One who realises the great difficulty of ren-

64 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

dering exact meanings or equivalents in trcms-
lation, will realise how difficult it would be to
bring a traditional saying from Aramaic into
Greek, and then from Greek into English, Ger-
man, French, or whatever language it might
be, and be sure of preserving the exact content
in meaning of the one uttering the saying.
The variation of a single word might make a
vast difference in meaning. There was no
punctuation in the original, and there were no
verse divisions. These were all supplied —
arbitrarily supplied — later. We know to-day
how the use of, how the placing of a particular
mark in punctuation may make a vast differ-
ence in context and meaning.

There is another thing that we cannot lose
sight of — the various interpolations that were
made in the New Testament Scriptures. That
there were numerous interpolations, as well as
changes of arrangement, is now a well-authen-
ticated and a well-established fact. Later, fol-
lowing the days of the Apostolic Church, when
the creed makers began to do their work, with
their extensive metaphysical speculations and
formulations of the fourth century, followed
by the still greater corruptions of the seventh
century, we can readily see how easy and how
natural it would be to make interpolations in
the text here and there, to suit these forma-
tions. Those, therefore, who claim that such

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 65

changes were made, may be abundantly right
in their claim.

If, therefore, the teachings and the mission
of Jesus were made to depend upon any one
saying of his, we can readily see, in the light
of the foregoing, how impossible it would be
for us to arrive at any adequate knowledge of
what he really taught. Fortunately, however,
we are not left in doubt as to his purpose and
teaching, and therefore as to his great mis-
sion. His purpose was so distinctly stated by
him and was so persistently reiterated by both
word and act, that he who would know, can
know.

As the supreme purpose and work of Jesus
was to reveal God to man, and thereby reveal
man to himself, his idea of God is fundamental.
It is the very fountain-head itself. The Jews
of the days of the prophets and the Jews of his
day were taught and believed that God —
Jehovah — the one God, was their God and
their Father. He was their God and their
Father, but not the Father of any other nation
or people. But even with them, his father-
hood was primarily national and not individual.

In Moses and Isaiah we get glimpses of him
as being a God of hope and trust and help,
one upon whom the individual can call, but
at the time of Jesus this was scarcely a con-
ception, let alone a possession, on the part of

66 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the people. The new and almost startling
revelation that Jesus made, marks the greatest
advance in religious conception and practice,
or at least in possible practice, in the history
of mankind.

The foundation of Old Testament time, and
still more pronouncedly of the religion of
Israel in Jesus' time, was the Law. It had
been pronounced, it had been written, and was
in the custody of the Rabbis. It was guarded
zealously; uniformly and almost by rote it
was interpreted. It was so thoroughly
" hedged " about, that it seems almost as if the
hedge were the supreme thing — of greater im-
portance than the things it guarded.

At the time of Jesus, the voice of the
Prophet had ceased, no Prophet had spoken
for close to three hundred years. The Scribe
had taken his place. The Prophet had his face
to the future, and his ear open to the Divine
Voice within. The Scribe had his face to the
past, with the belief that the Divine Voice had
ceased to speak. It was natural, therefore, for
them to believe that the word once given
should be zealously guarded ; that it should be
hedged about even to the extent of being idol-
ised. It was to be the rule of conduct, and
admitted of no variation. It grew to be exag-
gerated and grew in importance. An able
Bible scholar and writer in dealing with these

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 67

conditions has said : * " We see from the Gos-
pels that the popular religion of that day had
become wholly externalised and legalistic.
Only through the outward and material could
men approach and please the God of Heaven.
. . . It is true that a common name of God
at the time of Jesus was the Holy One, but
the rabbinic conception of his holiness was
superficial. We see the Scribe's idea of holi-
ness in his own life and endeavour. He washed
the outside of cups and platters, while his own
heart was full of extortion and excess (Matt,
xxiii, 25). . . . His holiness was ceremonial,
not vital. And this was his thought of the
holiness of God. It was removal from cere-
monial uncleanness, and hence was physical
rather than moral. To the Pharisee, the
thought that God could regard with any favour
a man who was Levitically unclean was re-
pellent, and he drew his robes about him with
horror when Jesus ate with publicans and
sinners."

In passing, then, from the Old Testament
and the later Jewish writings to the Gospels, he
again says : " In doing so we shall find that
between the dominant Old Testament concep-
tion of God and the conception of him which
Jesus had, the contrast is profound ; while be-

* "The Revelation of Jesus," by George HoUey Gil-
bert, Ph.D., D.D. The Macmillan Co.

68 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

tween the contemporaneous Jewish concep-
tion and that of Jesus, there is an illimitable
gulf."

We find, therefore, that when Jesus ap-
peared, the religion of Israel was formalised
and externalised. It was a matter of form
and ceremonial observances. No one spoke
with authority. The Scribe read, " It is writ-
ten," " The Prophet hath said." Into this dead
level of religion and of life comes the Gali-
lean Teacher, the Carpenter's Son; he comes
with a manner and with a message so tran-
scendently different from those to which the
people were accustomed, that he immediately
stood out and before all as one who spoke with
the voice of authority.

His message, the coming of the Kingdom
of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, as he most
frequently put it, marks the very beginning of
his ministry. It was also the one constant fac-
tor right through to its close. God is Spirit, he
taught. There is an inner spiritual realm
where our spirit can come into intimate con-
scious relations with God. His own relation-
ship was so natural and so intimate that he
employed almost continually the term. Father.

The first, we might say, to enter fully and
consciously into this relationship, he had found
it so wonderful, that his great desire was to
make it known to all men, that they also might

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 69

be drawn into it. This he realised, this he
taught, this was his supreme revelation to man-
kind.

We have glimpses — indeed, wonderful
glimpses — of this same teaching on the part of
other earlier prophets in Israel. It was far,
however, from being the common possession
of the people of his time. We have breathings
also of this same teaching on the part of vari-
ous inspired ones in other religions. We find
it now and then in their various sacred books.
It is indeed the one constant factor in all
religions. In the sacred books of the East
antedating our own Old Testament Scriptures,
we find great spiritual truths, as the following :
" He who meditates on God, attains God."
" Those who know Him as dwelling within
become immortal." " He is the bright sun be-
yond darkness at the hour of death." " There
is no end of misery, save in the knowledge of
God." " By this knowledge comes immortal
life." " Truth alone, not falsehood, conquers.
By truth is opened the road to the Supreme
abode." And again, " Round and round, within
a wheel, roams the vagrant soul, so long as
it fancies itself different and apart from the
Supreme. It becomes truly immortal when
upheld by him."

And then, more familiar to us, from the
Hebrew prophets we have the following:

70 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength ; they shall mount up with wings
as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary;
and they shall walk, and not faint." And
again, "Not by might, nor by power, but by
my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." " Because
thou hast made the Most High thy habitation
there shall no evil befall thee." And still
again, " The eternal God is thy refuge, and
underneath are the everlasting arms." " Trust
ye in the Lord forever : for in the Lord Jehovah
is everlasting strength." There are many in-
stances that might be cited both before and
since the beginning of the Christian era, show-
ing that many messengers of God proclaimed
the one great truth underlying all religions
and, therefore, all true religion — the conscious-
ness of God in the soul of man.

The constant factor in all religion — the
Divine rule in the heart of man — ^was, however,
given a uniquely personal exposition by the
Jud^an Teacher, who carried it to its fulness,
in a simple and easy-to-be-understood manner.
The fact that he not only taught it, but the
fact that he lived it here among men, consti-
tutes him the great Messenger of God to man.
His vivid and concrete presentation of truth
is indeed the culmination of all that had been
foreshadowed by his predecessors, and is the
fulfilment of Law and Prophets. The old the-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 71

ocracy of Israel, wonderful as it was in many
ways, contains many striking conceptions and
utterances linking the Divine and the human.

It nevertheless lacks the idea of a close per-
sonal relationship. There was a certain bind-
ing link that was missing. "What doth the
Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear
(reverence) the Lord thy God, to walk in his
ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and with all thy
soul?" Tell this to a child among us to-day
and it means very little to him. To the grown
mature mentality it may be a source of inspira-
tion, a source of reverence, but in reality very
little to him in the actual affairs of every-day
life. The time was ripe and the time was
waiting for one who could know God inti-
mately, so intimately that he could translate
this knowledge into terms of every-day life.

Born in a humble workman's home, out from
the ranks of the common life, came the Mes-
senger of God, who was to open the way, and
himself lead the way, that man might find his
right relations with the infinite Source of his
being, and that the life and the powers of this
infinite Source might become more concretely
and more happily operative in his own life.
He had a great innate, we might almost say,
a supreme, aptitude for the things of the Spirit.
His was a knowledge so intuitive that from

72 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the very beginning we might almost say, al-
though increasing as he grew and increased in
knowledge, there seemed to be constantly a
sense of filial relationship between himself and
God. It is on account of the nature of this
relationship, undoubtedly, that the term Fa-
ther is so constantly used by him.

He was in no sense a speculator in regard
to abstract truth. All of his teachings are
the result of his dmct experience of God. He
never gives evidence of any other thought than
that his life is essentially one, in quality always
one, with the life of God. " I and my Father
are one." He can conceive of his life as no
other than as one with the Father's life. All of
his teachings and all of his acts are portrayals
of this relationship, or rather the experience of
this relationship on his part.

It is the fact that he does experience God,
that makes him so inspiring and so trustworthy
a teacher concerning God. He follows com-
pletely the light within, the light which light-
eth every man coming into the world. And
the great value of his teaching is that this
same light burns, although perhaps not with
the same degree of illumination, at least at
first, in every one of us. His characteristic
phrase "The Kingdom of God," or "The
Kingdom of Heaven," was always in his mind
the realm of an inner experience and realisa-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 73

tion, out of which was to spring the active
daily life. It is within you, he said in unmis-
takable terms. It is the conscious active re-
lationship between man and God when through
desire and through will man voluntarily enters
into this relationship.

"With Jesus it was a relationship so natural
and so personal, that it continually bore all the
characteristics, as has already been said, of a
filial relationship between him and the Father.
He found supreme satisfaction in this relation-
ship. His great desire was to lead all men into
this same relationship. Not only his compa-
triots the Jews, but the Gentiles as well. And
as his ministry and his experience grew, it be-
came his desire that this be made known to all
nations of men.

Jesus not only speaks constantly of the
Kingdom of God, and of his desire to lead all
men into a knowledge of this kingdom; but
he also speaks of himself as having a unique
knowledge of this kingdom. Of this we see
evidence while yet in his teens — " Know ye not
that I must be about my Father's business? "
was his reply to his mother when she impa-
tiently waited for him at the Temple. The
account that we have of the way this answer
was received on the part of his mother, indi-
cates that she had but an inadequate idea of
the unique and all-absorbing consciousness

74 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

that burned within him. Later when he had
entered upon his active ministry his reply,
when told that his mother and his brethren
were waiting without and would like to speak
with him, was also most significant in this
respect.

From these and from other incidents that
the meagre accounts of his life give us occa-
sional peeps into, there is evidence of a con-
tinual sense on his part of possessing a unique
knowledge of the Kingdom of God, and there-
fore as standing in a unique relationship with
God, and also of the fact that the great pas-
sion of his life and the great mission of his
life was the leading of others into a knowl-
edge of these same unique relations with
God.

He continually prayed the Father for light
and for power that he might preserve these
relations and that he might adequately lead
others also into this relationship. He spent
much time alone in communion with the Fa-
ther, in order that he might hold himself con-
tinually true to this relationship, that through
desire and through will he had made the ab-
sorbing passion and the one great controlling
factor in his life.

To me the words of that great spiritual
philosopher, Fichte, are significant in show-
ing this great distinguishing characteristic of

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 75

Jesus, and that sets him apart as the great
spiritual teacher of all time.

In showing that Jesus as he is presented to
us in the Gospel of John never conceived of
his life in any other light than as one with the
Father's Life, he says :

" But it is precisely the most prominent and
striking trait in the character of the Johannean
Jesus, ever recurring in the same shape, that he
will know nothing of such a separation of his
personality from his Father, and that he ear-
nestly rebukes others who attempt to make
such a distinction; while he constantly as-
sumes that he who sees him sees the Father,
that he who hears him hears the Father, and
that he and the Father are wholly one ; and he
unconditionally denies and rejects the notion
of an independent being in himself, such an un-
becoming elevation of himself having been
made an objection against him by misunder-
standing. To him Jesus was not God, for to
him there was no independent Jesus whatever ;
but God was Jesus, and manifested himself as
Jesus."

In setting forth, then, how universally Divine
Being incarnates itself in human life, he says :
" From the first standing-point the Eternal
Word becomes flesh, assumes a personal, sen-
sible, and human existence, without obstruc-
tion or reserve, in all times, and in every indi-

76 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

vidual man who has a living insight into his
unity with God, and who actually and in truth
gives up his personal life to the Divine Life
within him, — precisely in the same way as it
became incarnate in Jesus Christ."

Jesus did not reach this condition and this
realisation through a period of trouble and
doubt, nor did he reach it over the road of the
philosopher, or of the metaphysician.

He undoubtedly believed himself from the
very start as one possessed of a unique under-
standing of, and therefore in unique relations
with God, and his whole after life demonstrated
that this was undoubtedly true. His supreme
sense of Divine self-realisation was the pure
and absolute truth of inner consciousness, —
self-existent and independent. He thus had
the equipment of a great spiritual genius and
leader, and his later active life demonstrated
that he "possessed the supreme individuality
of history." The incident at the Temple in
connection with his parents when a mere
youth, indicates even then a consciousness, on
his part, of his unique connection with the
spiritual realm (Luke ii, 41-50) ; even then it
would seem that he was somehow conscious
of the fact that he was to be a teacher and a
revealer of great spiritual truth.

His subsequent years of study and prepara-
tion, his delving into the innermost spiritual

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 77

meanings of the teachings of some of the
great Hebrew prophets, his own independent
thought and meditation, his communing with
the Father, all served undoubtedly to increase
this consciousness on his part, as well as to
give him due preparation as the world's su-
preme spiritual teacher.

The years pass, and when we again have
an account of him, it is at the time of a great
spiritual revival that has come into being
among his people, or at least the beginning of
a great spiritual revival.

John the Baptist has broken away from the
teachings or the tenets of the Law, as inter-
preted and handed out by the scribes. He has
become a revolutionist in connection with the
religion of Israel. He has gone into the quiet
and his own soul has communed with its
Maker. He also has caught a glimpse of the
divinity of human nature ; of his relations with
God, and therefore all men's relations with
God.

He comes to the various centres with his
stirring message, that the Kingdom of God is
at hand, and that men are to prepare for the
reign of God in their hearts. It was a stir-
ring and a drawing appeal by a unique and
powerful personality; and from the accounts,
we must believe that it thrilled all the land of
Judaea and the country of the Jordan. In addi-

78 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

tion to these vigorous and stirring words of
life, he employed an old Jewish ceremony, that
of baptism, initiating his converts or his fol-
lowers into their new life. Jesus is drawn with
the other great multitudes that go out day
after day to hear John.

He finds in him a kindred spirit. He finds
his message a kindred message. He evidently
is ready to begin his own ministry for which
he has been preparing and waiting for years,
and he accepts the rite of baptism at the hands
of John, as an initiation into his own life-
work as a teacher. From the very beginning
of his ministry, he is conscious of being the
Messiah, the Supreme Teacher and Revealer
of God to man and of God's rule in the heart
of man. It is clearly evident that his prepara-
tion has been complete, and that his own self-
consciousness is completely and divinely
evolved — that he is the son of man and the son
of God. He is Messiah and Redeemer, he is
the first to evolve to the God-consciousness
and able to speak, as one having authority, the
truth that shall make men free.

The day of the old dispensation has passed
and the day of the new dispensation has
dawned. He who found the way, by the natu-
ral force of love experienced in that finding,
becomes the supreme leader of other men into
that way. It was Origen, one of the early

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 79

Christian writers, who said : " From him there
began the interweaving of divine and human
nature in order that the human by communion
with the divine, might rise to be divine, not in
Jesus alone but in all those who not only be-
lieve but enter upon the life which Jesus
taught."

Christ is the universal Divine nature in all.
It is the state of God-consciousness, it is the
recognition of the indwelling God. It is the
realisation of this Divine life as the essence of
our life, as our very life itself, and living con-
tinually in thought, and therefore in act, from
this the real centre. The man Jesus becomes
the Christ Jesus — truly the Messiah and the
Saviour of men — by virtue of being the first to
sense, to realise, and to travel the way of sal-
vation.

" I believe," said Emerson, " in the still
small voice, and that voice is the Christ within
me." Man is eternally one with the Divine
source of all life. Jesus realising this in its
completeness said, and said most truly, " I and
my Father are one." In life, in love, in power,
our true being is perfect. As we comprehend
the real meaning of this and through the joint
agencies of desire and will we live life from
its true Centre, we are led into an appreciation
of the wonderful possibilities of human life
here and now.

8o IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

It was the truly inspired philosopher Hegel
who said, " All that has value to men, the
eternal, the self-existent, is contained in man
himself and has to develop from within him-
self." This was essentially the teaching of
Jesus.

V

HIS RELATIONS WITH THE FATHER-
HUMAN OR DIVINE? WHAT HE SAYS
REGARDING THIS, AND OF HIS UN-
USUAL INSIGHT AND POWERS:
HIS TEACHING REGARDING
ALL OTHERS IN THIS
CONNECTION

This supreme knowledge of the things of the
Spirit on the part of Jesus was so great, and
he lived in such constant and such complete
consciousness of the oneness of his life with
the life of the Father, that we are apt, and
naturally, to make the mistake that has been
so often made, of interpreting him as identify-
ing himself in substance with the Father, which
he evidently never did and which he continu-
ally disclaimed. It was not so in the thought
of his disciples and of his immediate hearers,
although his sayings were at times hard for
them to understand, so hard that he felt called
upon many times to chide them for taking his
sayings in a material sense, when his whole
intention was that they be taken in a spiritual,
interior sense.

There was never any thought on their part
Si

82 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

that he was God. The fact that he refers so
many times to God as the Father of his dis-
ciples and as the Father of all other men, the
same as being his own Father, made it clear
to them, as it should to us, that his oneness was
a moral union, a union in aims and in character,
and not a union in any metaphysical sense.
The stories of his infancy, written many
decades after his death, were intended to ex-
plain his unique personality as miraculous.
The opening chapters of Matthew and of Luke
both contain such accounts. We find no such
account in Mark, from which these two were
primarily taken, and which is the account near-
est to Jesus' time.

Moreover, as he never alluded even once, so
far as we have any account, to any miraculous
circumstances attending his birth, and there-
fore his life, he apparently knew nothing of
them whatever. And since he had the same
struggles and temptations as we have, since
his every teaching was — as I am so ye shall
be, — we can see how tremendously significant
becomes his unique individuality and personal-
ity in example.

Of any peculiarity of birth, then, his dis-
ciples apparently knew nothing, or any of his
hearers. He was regarded by all of his time
as the son of Joseph and of Mary, the same as
were his four brothers and his sisters — ^the

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 83

children of poor but greatly respected Jewish
parents. Even they apparently knew nothing
of any peculiarity of his birth, although they
were plainly conscious of a peculiarity of his
tendencies and his character. He, therefore,
evidently came to his disciples without any ad-
vantages other than those of his own superior
mind and heart, and it was these that made
them recognise him as master and they as
disciples; he as teacher and they as co-
workers.

These were also the characteristics that gave
him his power over men, and that made him
speak as one having authority to all those who
gathered around to hear him during his up-
wards of two years of public ministry. Al-
though he constantly uses terms that indicate
his perfect moral union with the Father, he
continually strives to make it plain that this
union has come about through his humanity.
His will, he tells us, is always distinct from
God's will, though never opposed to God's
will — " I can of myself do nothing : as I hear
I judge: and my judgment is righteous; be-
cause I seek not mine own will, but the will of
him that sent me." " And he that sent me is
with me; he hath not left me alone; for I do
always the things that are pleasing to him."
He continually prays to God. He says at one
time : " Ye seek to kill me, a man that hath

84 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

told you the truth." Again, as indicated above,
he says that the very reason why Messianic
or superior judgment is given him is because
he is the " Son of man." He indicates his one-
ness with his own people, the Jews, as one of
those who knew what they worship. These
and many other instances indicate how clearly
he recognised and regarded himself as a human
being, but one with a Supreme God-conscious-
ness.

Twice certain ones of the Jews accused him
of claiming to be God — and it was a blas-
phemous claim in their eyes. In one case, by
his reply, he indicated his sense of complete
dependence upon God. He continually asserts
this complete dependence upon God, but gives
as the reason for his superior knowledge of
God, and his unique relationship with the
Father, his supreme desire to do continually
the will of the Father.

The reason he states as to why the Father
is continually with him, directing him and sus-
taining him, and giving him power to do the
things that he does, is that the Father loves
him, and that he always does the things which
are pleasing to the Father. " If ye keep my
commandments, ye shall abide in my love;
even as I have kept my Father's command-
ments, and abide in his love," he tells his dis-
ciples. It would seem almost inconceivable

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 85

that words so plain could be so twisted as to
mean that the Father abides in him and directs
him because he is of the same substance as
the Father. His complete dependence for
guidance in all the acts of his daily life upon
the Father, is illustrated by his own words
again and again.

He alludes again and again to his moral
union with the Father, brought about by the
action of his desire and his will, but he no-
where makes claim or even allusion to any
metaphysical relationship. The following are
the words of an eminent American Bible
scholar in connection with a study of the say-
ings of Jesus as portrayed in the fourth Gos-
pel : * " We conclude, therefore, that the one-
ness of Jesus with the Father, as far as we can
learn from His words in the fourth Gospel, is
a oneness of character. He was perfectly obe-
dient to the Father, and so His will was the
Father's will manifested in the flesh. They
who heard His words, heard the thought of the
Father perfectly transmitted. They who felt
His love, felt the love of the Father in its most
appreciable, because human, form. They who
submitted to His will, thereby became sub-
missive to the will of the Father. They who
felt themselves quickened under His gracious

*"The Revelation of Jesus," by George Holley Gil-
bert, Ph.D., D.D. The Macmillan Co.

85 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

influence, were quickened by the power of the
Father in the form of its highest potency."
Again he says : " It may be remarked, in con-
clusion, that this interpretation is in harmony
with the expressed purpose of the evangelist,
which was to prove that Jesus was the Christ
(John XX, 31). He does not set out to prove
that Jesus is of the same nature as the Father
but to prove that He is the one anointed of the
Father to give eternal life to men. There-
fore, he appropriately closes his Gospel with
the scene in which Thomas adores the Mes-
siah.

" This interpretation is also in harmony with
the fact of the human consciousness of Jesus,
which is evidenced throughout the entire Gos-
pel; in harmony with the fact of Jesus' con-
sciousness of absolute moral union with the
Father, which is manifest throughout the en-
tire Gospel — a consciousness that uttered itself
in such a word as ' I and the Father are one ' ;
and it is in harmony, finally, with the fact of
his Messianic consciousness. Jesus as the
Messiah is the perfect revealer of the Father,
the perfect representative of the Father, the
perfect redeemer of those who accept Him, and
He is therefore infinitely worthy of the adora-
tion and worship of all mankind."

When Jesus uses the expression, " The Fa-
ther in me and I in the Father," and " he that

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 87

beholdeth me beholdeth him that sent me,"
it is clearly evident that he means that he is
a perfect revealer of the Father, in character
and in action. Seeing the Father cannot pos-
sibly refer to seeing in the physical, material
sense; for his uniform teaching in this respect
is that God is Spirit, he is, therefore, not to be
seen in the material sense. He is to be known
only by being perceived through the channel of
the Spirit, the inner consciousness.

We can know God only through spiritual
apprehension. And herein lies Jesus' claim to
Messiahship — a man that has told you the
truth, he says of himself, has realised so com-
pletely and supremely his oneness with the
Divine life and power, that he makes there-
after the sole purpose and object of his life
that of a teacher, a leader of other men into
this same wonderful life. Herein lies his sole
claim to Messiahship. The Christ had arisen to
full consciousness within him, it had assumed
the ascendency in his life, and his one desire
and passion thereafter was that of service — to
lead others to a perfect realisation of the Christ
within.

While God is the Father of all, the same as
of himself, men become sons, he teaches, and
herein lies salvation. It is the lifting of a
man's mind up from the material, physical, and
the transient, to a realisation of his life as one

88 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

with the Eternal Spirit. It was that men be
led to a knowledge of this life and this power,
as the Source of their life and their power, and
to identify themselves always actively with it,
that Jesus made his ceaseless task. Concern-
ing the expression so continually on his lips.
The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of
Heaven — It is within you, he said. It cometh
not with observation. It is an invisible, in-
terior, spiritual reality. It is the Divine rule,
the rule of the spirit of omnipotent creative
Spirit in the heart of man.

It is present, and iecomes active in its
operations, in your life, the moment that you
realise and acknowledge it. God has done his
part ; man through the channel of his mind and
his inner consciousness must do his part.
Divine self-realisation will make active eter-
nally latent possibilities and powers whereby
we become co-operators with God, for truly, in
him we live, move, and have our being. The
one God and Father of all, who is above all,
and in you all. It is indeed a new life, or
birth into a new life; it is conversion and re-
demption combined, if you please, the moment
any soul realises this one great central truth
that Jesus brought within the realm of human
knowledge and experience.

It was Emerson who said, " Every Soul is
not only the inlet but may become the outlet

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 8g

of all there is in God." It was the great Jew-
ish thinker, Spinoza, the lens-grinder, born in
Holland, 1632, of whom Heine once wittily
said that all our modern philosophers see
through the glasses which Baruch Spinoza
ground, who said : " There is a universal sub-
stance which is God, the causa immanens, not
the causa transiens. This is the origin of all
things, the all-pervading force diffused
throughout the universe, ' the one eternal
unity.' This eternal and universal substance
consists of an infinite number of attributes,
each one expressing eternal and infinite being.
The human mind itself is part of the infinite
mind of God." *

Almost identical with the thought of Spinoza
is that of Father Tyrrell, when in his last book
he says, " Union with God is union with the
Divine life and action, with the undisturbed
centre of the cyclone." The following, the
ripest life thought of a recent writer, is to me
most significant : f " Christ came the first time

*"We adhere firmly," says Ernst Haeckel, in "The
Riddle of the Universe," "to the pure, unequivocal mon-
ism of Spinoza: Matter or infinitely extended substance,
and spirit (or energy), or sensitive and thinking sub-
stance, are the two fundamental attributes or principal
properties of the all-embracing divine essence of the
vrorld, the universal substance."

1 1. K. Funk, D.D., LL.D., "The Next Step in Evo-
lution."

go IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

into men's vision by coming on the plane of
their senses; He comes the second time into
men's vision by lifting men up to His plane of
spiritual comprehension. This coming of
Christ involves a new birth, a new creation, a
new kingdom. It means a new step in the evo-
lution of man. . . . Now he steps from the
kingdom of the natural man to the kingdom of
the spiritual man, every portion of this step a
natural process subject to critical scientific
analysis if that analysis goes deep enough,
wide enough, far enough, . . . Many times,
and in many ways, He declares, I am
' from above.' He is born a natural man,
and yet possesses the life of the king-
dom next higher, and proceeds to lift the
natural man by a new birth into the kingdom
of the spiritual man. He is born the son of
man and the Son of God, bridging the chasm
with his own being. . . . And so, the
Christ life takes the character, the soul, the
spirit of the natural man, which have developed
through the ages — takes them through a new
birth, this time with man's consent. ' Marvel
not that I say unto you. Ye must be born
again,' ' Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except
a man be born from above, he cannot see the
kingdom of God.' . . .

" The new birth of the natural man into the
kingdom of the spiritual man, the reborning of

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 91

his personality, making him a child of God
after the type of Christ, is the tap-root of Chris-
tianity, is the chief artery. Cut that and all is
gone. Keep that and let the ' new creature '
grow toward his fulness, then Christ is re-
created, reincarnated in him, and through him
He is manifest again among men."

Back of all modern idealistic philosophy fore-
shadowing what great minds would eventually
deduce through the processes of research and
of reason, stands the Galilean Teacher, formu-
lating a world ethic and a world religion
through the processes of direct consciousness,
by choosing so to order his life that these
revelations of the inner life and consciousness
might be revealed clearly and unmistakably to
him. The truth that he perceived, and there-
fore the discovery that he made and presented
so simply and so persuasively to the world, was
the fact that the human and the Divine are the
two phases of the same great order of being, to
be personified in man at his highest. There is
that in God that manifests itself as, and that
therefore becomes, human. There is that in
man that is divine and that awaits only his
recognition to manifest itself as divine.

The divine essence, the divine Centre of life,
came to Jesus as " Father," and to him the
Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven
took the form of a filial relationship between

92 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

man and God. It was this indwelling divine
life, this " Father in me," to which he ascribed
all of his wonderful knowledge and all of his
wonderful works. The Father manifested him-
self in him because he always tried to do the
will of the Father. He thereby made the con-
ditions whereby the Divine could manifest,
speak through, and work through the human.
Although the Kingdom of God was for him
an invisible spiritual kingdom or state, it never-
theless was a state that was to hold and to
condition all outward and material aspects or
phases of life, and herein lay its great dynamic
force. Herein lay the reason that in impor-
tance it preceded everything else. Herein lay
the reason for his injunction, " Seek ye first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and
all these things shall be added unto you." He
was thereby simply enunciating the law of
cause and effect through which the Eternal
Energy unceasingly works. He had discov-
ered, so to speak, a faculty or a department of
the human mind, whereby it can make itself
open and sensitive to the leadings of the
higher divine mind, so that it can become a
channel for the inspirations and the leadings
of this mind.

The Infinite divine mind is the source of all
higher wisdom and power. Do away with the
sense of separateness of your life and the eter-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 93

nal divine life, and you make the conditions
such that this higher intelligence manifests
more fully to and through you. Do away with
this sense of separateness and thereby remove
limitations, so that the divine power, which is
the one creative power, may manifest through
you in a less trammelled manner.

The divine mind is perfect and it gives per-
fect expression in form. Realising it as the
real creative mind in us, will give abounding
health and strength to physical form — the
physical body — in the degree that it is un-
trammelled and free to do so. The inner life-
force builds always healthfully unless too much
interfered with.

It can be interfered with through the viola-
tion of mental law, or through the violation of
physical law, and either consciously or uncon-
sciously. In the case of the former, it is
through the channel of the subconscious mind.
In the case of the latter it is through the chan-
nel of natural law. The great secret of healthy
body-building or of healthy rebuilding, is to
know how, through the action of the conscious
thinking mind, to relate the subconscious mind
which has charge of the bodily functions and
operations and also of all cell-building, to the
superconscious mind — the divine mind within
us — that this higher mind may impress it with
its own perfection in form. This means the

94 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

raising of all building operations to their high-
est potency.

The subconscious mind is wonderfully exact
in its workings, and it is marvellously respon-
sive to the active thinking mind. To see one's
self growing healthfully, to think and to image
health and wholeness, instead of disease, to
live chronically in the mental attitude of faith
and hope and courage, instead of fear, pes-
simism and cynicism, creates healthy cell
tissue and wholeness of body.

To live in thoughts of love, sympathy, good-
will, and service for all of one's neighbours and
for all people, instead of with thoughts of
hatred or envy or jealousy, means building for
health and for wholeness instead of weakness
and disease. As is the mind and spirit so
inevitably in time will become the body. As is
the inner, which is the realm of cause, so al-
ways and inevitably will become the outer,
which is the realm of effect.

As God is still creating and building in the
world to-day, the same, exactly the same, as
he has always done, so we, by gaining a knowl-
edge of the laws through which he works, can
build our own world harmoniously and as may
be desired. This is true, not only of the body,
but of all phases and conditions of life. Jesus,
through his wonderful innate perception of
spiritual truth, anticipated, and with wonder-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND gs

ful accuracy, by many centuries, great laws of
biology and of psychology that we by the
slower processes of experimentation have been
discovering only during the past few years.

He was not able to anticipate, or at least he
did not anticipate, the great facts and findings
in science that the modern world is in posses-
sion of, but this may be because he was not so
interested in, or so concerned with them. His
great interest was the minds, the souls, and the
bodies of men, and after all, in whatever light
we may view it, this is the chief thing. It was
Immanuel Kant who said long ago, " There is
nothing great in the world but man, and noth-
ing great in man but his soul." And with a
greater knowledge of the effects and the opera-
tions of mental and emotional states, he might
have added — and as is the soul so is the body,
or so will the body become.

Another fact that Jesus had a clear knowl-
edge of, was the fact that thoughts are forces
and also of the law of their working, which is
that like builds like, and that like attracts like.
The fact of his wonderful powers of healing
would seem to be based wholly upon this as-
sumption, at least if the chroniclers are trust-
worthy in their statements as to v>rhy he could
do his remarkable works of healing in some
places and not in others. Contrary to the
thoughts of some, that the unusual accomplish-

96 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

ment is through the violation or the disregard
of natural law or of spiritual law, and for
which the term miracle is used, it was on ac-
count of his supreme understanding of law, that
Jesus was enabled to do the works which those
of lesser understanding could regard only as
miracles.

Many things that in Jesus' time, and even in
centuries subsequent to his time, were regarded
as miracles, have become the commonplace of
to-day. That is the reason why early man
explained so many things through the avenue
of myth and mythology ; he had not yet found
the laws whereby they occurred. Jesus under-
stood the power of mind. By his keen per-
ceptive faculties, he understood clearly the law
of suggestion, or as it is termed by modern
psychologists, " mental suggestion." It is the
law whereby one mind, without the aid of
the written or the spoken word, can impress
itself upon the subconscious mind of an-
other. Similar to a law of our modern wire-
less telegraphy, it depends for its effectiveness
upon how nearly the minds of the two are at-
tuned one to another, and also upon the power
of the active mind in the transaction in concen-
tration or thought-focusing. It also depends
for its effectiveness upon the ability of the one
using this agency to reach and to impress the
higher realms of the subconscious mind of the

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 97

Other. Jesus' understanding of the law in this
respect, was well-nigh complete.

There are several cases recorded where the
healing was effected, not in the immediate
presence of the one healed, and therefore not
with the mental co-operation of that one. In
most all cases, however, he sought the co-
operation of the ones he would heal ; this was
through the arousing of a mental and thereby a
spiritual activity on their part, which took the
form of faith. Faith is the focusing of the
thought forces upon the accomplishment of a
certain object, with firm and constant expecta-
tion as to its fulfilment. Through this aid he
was able to arouse into supreme activity the
inner subconscious mind of the patient. In
the degree that he was able successfully to do
this, the healing process was instantaneous.

There were certain centres, according to the
accounts given, where by reason of the an-
tagonism to him, and on account of the lack of
this contributing agency, he was not able to do
any works of healing. A man cannot be healed
contrary to his desires or his will, the same as
God cannot draw a man into his kingdom,
whereby the reign of the higher understanding
and the use of the higher powers become domi-
nant in his life, contrary to his desires or
against his will. God works only through law,
and the reign of law is supreme.

98 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

It is only during the last half-century or so,
beginning with the advent of Dr. Quimby, in
Maine, that we have come into a wider knowl-
edge of, and a wider intelligent use of, these
same forces as therapeutic agents. And to-
day multitudes of people every year are at-
testing the efficiency of mental and spiritual
healing. One thing stands out pre-eminently,
the same as it did in Jesus' day — the higher
the life the more efficient he or she becomes
in the mastery of and in the use of these
agencies in healing, and the more fully
they are able to eliminate the element of
time.

There is scarcely an intelligent physician in
the world to-day who does not recognise and
who does not attest the great therapeutic value
of these mental and spiritual agencies. Many
are studying the laws of their operation, and
are using them in their regular practice. Many
are seeking the help of, and are calling to their
aid in some of their cases, those who have made
this field their special study and practice. Jesus
sometimes used the expression. Thy sins^-or
thy errors — be forgiven thee, thereby recog-
nising as we recognise so fully to-day that all
disease is through the violation of law. It is
not God-constituted; it results through a fail-
ure to recognise, consciously or unconsciously,
intentionally or unintentionally, the fixed and

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 99

never to be evaded laws that God has con-
stituted, or rather, that he has instituted. No
healing can come about, therefore, and no
healing, however it may come about, can be
permanent, until the violation of the law
ceases.

In this connection it is also well to remem-
ber that moderation is one of the established
laws of life. Excesses have to be paid for with
many and sometimes with frightful costs. The
higher we ascend to the upper stories of our
being, which is but another way of saying, the
more quickly and the more fully we seek and
enter the Kingdom of God and his righteous-
ness, whereby the laws of right living are more
clearly perceived by us, the keener are our
enjoyments, and the more lasting and the more
satisfying are our pleasures. The less are the
after-kicks, and the less are the penalties that
come haltingly limping up in the rear, that we
have to stop and take aboard, and that we
sometimes have to nurse and care for for a
long time.

So abounding is the health, so transcendent
are the joys and satisfactions when one seeks
and enters this kingdom, this kingdom of divine
self-realisation, this life under the guidance of
the Spirit, that Jesus taught it as the supreme
thing in life, compared to which all other ap-
parent gains were as nothing. To teaching it

100 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

to Other men that they might share in its joys
he gave the best endeavours of his life.

He said that the reahsation of or the estab-
lishment of this relationship, was like a mer-
chant seeking goodly pearls, and having found
one pearl of great value, he went and sold all
that he had and bought it. It is the one all-
inclusive thing. It is so valuable that it is
like finding a great treasure hidden in a field,
of which heretofore we have known nothing.
That treasure can be made to buy all other
things. He said it is like the tiny grain of mus-
tard seed which, though exceedingly small at
first, grows into a tree. It is, he said, like
leaven; it will permeate and will raise to a
higher level and to a more usable form every
phase and faculty of man's being.

It begins small, you make your choice, you
place yourself voluntarily in definite relation-
ship with this power within. The higher wis-
dom begins to lead, and makes its leadings
clearer day by day. We grow daily in the
power of realising and of following it. It be-
comes in time supreme, and leads on always
to the highest good.

It becomes the chief factor, the eternal factor
of life, leading us always in the path of the
higher good here, and imbuing us with faith
in the fact that life is eternally progressive,
and exactly as we make life here, will it be

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND loi

for us in the hereafter. We thus make, and
we thus decide, our own heaven or our own
hell, both here and hereafter. Both are states
or conditions of life, and the only heaven or
the only hell that one will ever have is that of
his own choice, and therefore that of his own
making. God would not be God, and law
would not be law, were it otherwise.

VI

JESUS' TEACHINGS REGARDING SIN AND

"THE SINNER" AND GOD'S ATTITUDE

TOWARDS THEM: DID HE TEACH

THE DEPRAVITY— THE FALL—

OF MAN, OR THE ESSENTIAL

DIVINITY OF MAN?

This is one of the great supplementary teach-
ings of Jesus. This is one of his great gifts to
mankind, and this is what he so clearly taught
through the medium of one of his two greatest
parables, the parable of the Lost Son. It might
be termed the parable of the wandering son,
and it could then be paraphrased the parable of
the wandering soul. We listen to priest and to
preacher in their expositions of those portions
of ancient creeds, still preserved, that affirm
the natural depravity and the lost estate of
man. This is still one of the fundamentals of
every one in existence to-day. Our twentieth-
century knowledge and our twentieth-century
mentalities make it utterly impossible for us to
give credence to this the same as to some

102

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 103

Other fundamentals, as did our forefathers
of generations ago. To take the direct teach-
ings of the supreme spiritual teacher of all
time, who claimed such unusual knowledge of
God, and\whose life gave evidence of such
knowledge, seems to me far more authoritative
and more thoroughly common-sense.

The parable of the Lost Son is Jesus' teach-
ing of the breaking and the renewal of man's
relation to God, and the way both are brought
about. It is preceded immediately by the par-
able of the lost coin, which makes it addition-
ally clear that the problem of sin and the
condition of the sinner are what Jesus dis-
tinctly had in mind. It is brief and clear-cut:
" Either what woman, having ten pieces of
silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a
candle, and sweep the house, and seek dili-
gently till she find it? And when she hath
found it, she calleth her friends and her neigh-
bours together, saying. Rejoice with me; for
I have found the piece which I had lost. Like-
wise, I say unto you, There is joy in the pres-
ence of the angels of God over one sinner that
repenteth." The parable of the Lost Son con-
tains such a vitally important part of Jesus'
entire teachings, both as to his teachings of the
nature of God and of God's relation to sin and
to what we term the sinner, that it is well to
have it fresh in mind.

104 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

In simplicity of form, conciseness of expres-
sion, and its inclusive scope, it reminds me
many times of Lincoln's Gettysburg address :

" A certain man had two sons : and the
younger of them said to his father. Father,
give me the portion of goods that falleth to
me. And he divided unto them his living.
And not many days after the younger son gath-
ered all together, and took his journey to a far
country, and there wasted his substance with
riotous living. And when he had spent all,
there arose a mighty famine in that land ; and
he began to be in want. And he went and
joined himself to a citizen of that country; and
he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And
he would fain have filled his belly with the
husks that the swine did eat : and no man gave
unto him. And when he came to himself, he
said. How many hired servants of my father's
have bread enough and to spare, and I perish
with hunger ! I will arise and go to my father,
and will say unto him. Father, I have sinned
against heaven, and before thee, and am no
more worthy to be called thy son: make me
as one of thy hired servants. And he arose
and came to his father.

" But when he was yet a great way off, his
father saw him, and had compassion, and ran,
and fell upon his neck, and kissed him. And
the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 105

against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no
more worthy to be called thy son. But the
father said to his servants, Bring forth the best
robe and put it on him ; and put a ring on his
hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither
the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and
be merry; for this my son was dead, and is
alive again; he was lost, and is found. And
they began to be merry. Now his elder son
was in the field: and as he came and drew
nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing.
And he called one of the servants, and asked
what these things meant. And he said unto
him, Thy brother is come ; and thy father hath
killed the fatted calf, because he hath received
him safe and sound. And he was angry and
would not go in: therefore came his father
out, and entreated him, and he answering said
to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve
thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy
commandment ; and yet thou never gavest me
a kid, that I might make merry with my
friends : but as soon as this thy son was come,
which hath devoured thy living with harlots,
thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And
he said unto him. Son, thou art ever with me,
and all that I have is thine. It was meet that
we should make merry, and be glad: for this
thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and
was lost, and is found."

io6 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

In the son's father, Jesus represents God the
Heavenly Father. He grants full pardon with-
out any condition, purely out of his abound-
ing love to the one who voluntarily turns to
him and whose desire is finally to live in the
realm of his love and his guidance, and there-
fore to do his will. It is in such thorough
keeping with Jesus' entire teachings concern-
ing God, that God is Love.

The son in time " came to himself " after liv-
ing for a period in the pigsty state of exist-
ence. In his longing for his own individual
experience of pleasures, he found the satiety
which always and inevitably results in the pur-
suit of pleasure from the physical alone, and
his life became thoroughly unsatisfactory. It
was leading him to physical suffering and deg-
radation, perhaps, the same as it was leading
him to mental degradation. He became con-
scious of the tremendous losses he was sus-
taining through this mode of living.

He was willing, he was more than willing, he
was glad, to heed and to follow the higher lead-
ing within him, the promptings of his higher
self. The Christ within urged and pleaded and
conquered, and he straightway arose and said,
I will go to my father. His will plucked
up, it sustained his desire, and he went to his
father. His father's heart went out to him
instantaneously — it could not be otherwise

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 107

from his very nature, according to the Mas-
ter's teaching.

So rejoiced was he, by the simple fact of
knowing that the child who had been lost to
him, had voluntarily returned, that the instant
he had knowledge of his coming, he went out
to meet and to greet him. He kissed him fer-
vently, he gave him the glad heart and a glad
hand, and he rejoiced that it was so. He did
not enter into any dogmatic or any ecclesiasti-
cal disquisition with him, in regard to the fact
that he had left him, that he had dishonoured
him, that he had spent his substance. He said
nothing in regard to his intense anger in that
a son of his should do this, and commit such
a grievous series of sins — nor. did he say any-
thing about some far-away ancestor that had
sinned, and of his son's being in a degraded
and lost state on account of the mistakes of this
far-away ancestor.

He imposed no conditions whatever for the
granting of his full pardon. There was noth-
ing that the son could do more than he had"
done. He did not say. Of course, son, I am
glad to see you back, but you have outraged
my sense of honour and therefore, as an angry
father, I cannot restore you to your own, un-
less some propitiation be made by you.

He did not impose any terms of probation by
telling him that he would have to stay around

io8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

and work for some days or weeks in order to
earn money enough to buy a sheep or a lamb
of him, to be taken out on some set date to
have its throat cut and to have various cere-
monies observed while the flowing blood would
make an atonement for the sins of the son
sufficient to appease the anger of the father,
that he might receive him again to himself and
in full favour. This might well have heen,
for sacrifices and burnt offerings to God were
still in vogue when Jesus came.

It was the spirit of religion, however, that
Jesus came to teach and restore. Away with
these things, these crude, these barbaric ideas !
said he. They are not only not pleasing, but
they are an abomination in the sight of the
Lord, and he proceeded to tell them the things
that were acceptable. His teaching here is
that God is our Heavenly Father; that as an
earthly father is willing to give good gifts unto
his children, so God is still more willing and
ready, and solely because he loves us. Pre-
eminently and supremely God is Love.

But his teaching, just as strongly, is also
that man must turn to God and must recognise
him as his father, and must long for his divine
reign in his thought and in his life. It in-
volves an act of repentance on his part for his
past shortcomings, while he remained outside
of the Heavenly Kingdom ; and then the desire

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND log

and the will to live in complete surrender and
in complete accordance with the divine lead-
ings of this eternal kingdom. Jesus not only
taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is this
reign of God in the heart, pushing out into all
phases of life's activities ; he taught also that in
every human soul God has implanted an inner
light that lights the way to this kingdom ; that
there is an inner spirit in man, continually urg-
ing him in the way of this kingdom and con-
tinually guiding him towards it.

This willingness on the part of God to par-
don, this essential quality of his nature, as
Jesus teaches, is not at all lessened by Jesus'
one obscure word, if indeed he be correctly
quoted, in regard to one sin for which there is
not forgiveness — the sin against the Holy
Spirit or the Holy Ghost. "And every one
who shall speak a word against the Son of man,
it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that
blasphemeth against the Holy Spirit it shall
not be forgiven." And the sentence then im-
mediately following seems to give a clear indi-
cation of what he meant by the Holy Spirit.
" And when they shall bring you before the
synagogues and the rulers, and the authorities,
be not anxious how or what ye shall answer,
or what ye shall say : for the Holy Spirit shall
teach you in that very hour what ye ought to
say." It is the indwelling spirit, the light that

HO IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

lighteth every man that cometh into the world,
that is continually urging us onward and up-
ward, therefore Godward.

It is the voice of the higher, diviner self; we
hear the voice, we heed its call, we follow the
higher leading; the Christ-consciousness as-
sumes ascendency, we have found the King-
dom of God and we dwell in the realm of his
righteousness. The indwelling spirit gradually
then assumes the ascendency in its guidance.
We realise that the old prophet knew whereof
he spoke when he said, "There is a spirit in
man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giv-
eth them understanding." We realise likewise
the truth uttered by a later writer : " Beloved,
now are we the sons of God, and we know that
when he shall appear we shall be like him."
" And, because ye are sons God has sent forth
his spirit into your hearts."

On the other hand, we can refuse to follow
this inner leading, we can voluntarily choose
the pigsty state of existence, thinking that
along this road lies pleasure ; it may for a time,
but it is always the lesser compared to the
greater. It is pleasure followed always by a
lack of the higher satisfaction, that the reality
of our nature cannot accept as the real. We
follow it farther until we realise that we are
on the wrong path in the pursuit of life and
of pleasure. The degradation of mind and

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND iii

body, the suffering of mind and body, the
weariness of spirit bring us finally to our
senses and we too arise and go to our Father.

We are created agents with a free will, and
God himself cannot bring us into the kingdom,
if we choose not to follow him by stifling and
refusing to listen to the call of the indwelling
Spirit that is the Divine in us. Undoubtedly
Jesus' teaching that the greatest sin and the
one sin that may not be forgiven, the denial of
the Holy Spirit, is on account of the fact that
for it there cannot be the excuse of ignorance.

Its leadings are implanted in each human
soul, and voluntarily to crush them and de-
liberately to refuse to follow them involves the
supreme penalty. Even here it is Jesus' teach-
ing that God has no desire to punish, and that
the only punishment there is, is that that re-
sults from the deliberate violation of his estab-
lished laws, and even a sin against the Holy
Spirit God is willing to pardon, but he has
made man a free moral agent and he can do
no more.

If man, therefore, by stifling his higher lead-
ings, deliberately chooses and persists in fol-
lowing the path of sin, he must therefore bear
the consequences that sin — the violation of
law — entails. The Galilean Christ, he who
reckoned his pedigree from the Infinite and
who taught us so to reckon ours, is helping

112 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

us rid ourselves of the old barbaric idea that
God punishes.

He has instituted great systems of law gov-
erning the universe about us. We term it
natural or physical law. He has instituted
great systems of law that govern the thoughts
and the acts in the lives of men. We call it
mental and moral law. We recognise these
laws, we obey them, and thereby work in har-
mony with them. They necessarily, so to
speak, work in harmony with us, rendering
us only good. Through ignorance or through
choice we fail to recognise them, we disobey
or violate them, and pain and suffering and
loss is the result. The violation of law car-
ries always its own penalty.

Mind, intelligence is given us that we may
discover and work in harmony with natural
physical law. An indwelling spirit inherent
within us, acting always through the channel
of mind and intelligence, enables us to discern
mental and moral law and to bring our
thoughts, our acts, and, therefore, our lives
into harmony with it. The more intelligent
we are, the more fully we follow and obey it.
God does not therefore seek man's punish-
ment. And according to Jesus' teaching, the
idea of an angry God is an anomaly.

It is supremely a world of law and order, and
not of fiat or caprice. God works to-day as al-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 113

ways through great systems of immutable
law. He gives us minds and an inner light
to discern, to know, and to obey these laws.
Violation of law carries its own punishment.
It is inherent in the law itself.

Religious teachers of the dogmatic type, re-
ligious organisations in the past and even to-
day, of the same type, violating one of the very
fundamental teachings of Jesus, seek to gain
and to hold control over their adherents
through the element of fear. They say that
there are those who can be reached and who
can be held only through fear, and they hold
vast millions in their sway through this agency.
It is false — it is as false as the hell that the
doctrine and the acts and the practices that
result from it, lead to. The fact that they en-
deavour to keep the real fundamental teach-
ings of Jesus away from their people, and give
them in their place primarily the formulated
dogmas of early groups of men about him, indi-
cates that they may be more interested in
building up and in holding together the or-
ganisation, than they are in the real welfare of
their adherents — that it is an organisation of
getting, rather than of giving.

Only those who have failed utterly to grasp
the spirit of the Master, the spirit of his teach-
ings, and the whole spirit of his life, can hold
such a view or can sanction such a practice.

114 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

The awful things that the use of this element
of fear in the hands of a close corporation,
among ignorant, superstitious, or unthinking
people, has led to, is all too well known by
those who are at all intimately acquainted with
history. Alas, also, whatever we may want to
think to the contrary, it is alive and working
yet among us to-day.

When a minister of a large religious organi-
sation, one of the anointed ones of the " Vicar
of Christ on earth," will for three years pursue
a widowed mother, whose only son and her
sole means of support has died, to get from her
every last dollar that he could get, in payment
for his efforts to get the son's soul out of
purgatory, we see how the element of fear
kindred to that of the dark ages, used as a
weapon, is still among us. The poor mother,
good woman as she is, did not realise that
under the law of God a mother's love for her
child, and the law of love and of spirit that
bind them one to another, could be far more
effective in its almost infinite longing for his
welfare, than any efforts of such an ecclesi-
astical scoundrel could ever be. Well might
she realise, if her knowledge of human nature
were greater, that a pious scoundrel of this
type, who would take from one in actual need
even a cent, even a farthing, for such a service,
let alone actually pursuing her and using on

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 115

her the club of fear, not once but several times,
that he might get from her all that he could,
would have no inclination to give such service
as he professed, or at best there would be ab-
solutely no reliability to be placed upon him as
to his giving such service.

Were this but a single or an isolated case, it
would be scarcely worth the mention. Were it
on the other hand the case of say a wealthy
or a well-to-do person, voluntarily seeking such
service, it would be different. The fact of the
matter is, however, that there are thousands of
such ecclesiastical scoundrels using this same
club of fear on the poor, the unthinking, and
the unfortunate in this and in other countries
where the organisation that sanctions it is in
existence.

For the actual sinner, Jesus taught that God
has infinite pity and love. He taught this not
only through this wonderful parable of the
Lost Son, but the whole tenor of his teaching
was to the effect that the very nature of the
Heavenly Father, whose supreme character-
istic is love, is to love and to draw his children
to him, even when they have erred and sinned.
The spirit of his entire teaching was that God
is a God of Infinite Love, and to draw the
minds of the people away from a God of anger
as now and then cropped out throughout the
old dispensation, he ceaselessly strove.

ii6 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

But for those who in the name of, and under
the cloak of religion, seek their own ends or
even the ends of an organisation, he had only
denunciation and condemnation, the most
scathing of which we have any record. " Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For ye devour widows' houses, and for a pre-
tence make long prayers: therefore ye shall
receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye
compass sea and land to make one prosel5rte;
and when he is made, ye make him twofold
more the child of hell than yourselves." And
again, " Beware of the scribes, which love to
go in long clothing, and love salutations in the
marketplaces, and the chief seats in the Syna-
gogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts:
which devour widows' houses, and for a pre-
tence make long prayers: these shall receive
greater damnation."

This action on Jesus' part, this scathing de-
nunciation was equalled by only one other. It
related to those who formulated strict re-
ligious or ecclesiastical doctrines, and who
tried through their interpretation and through
their every act, to bind the conscience of men
to them, in distinction from the great message
that he brought and taught, that the king-
dom of God is within, that the essence of
all religion is this personal reign of God

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 117

in the individual soul, that a man's reli-
gion is a matter between himself and his
God.

It is the distinction between the priest and
the prophet. The priest, who has taken the
place of the scribe, is interested primarily in
ecclesiasticism, in preserving and in strength-
ening the doginas of the organisation. He
and his kind are ever the persecutors of the
prophet type, that that Jesus so supremely
represented. They are the same as those that
finally killed him, the same as would kill him
to-day if he interfered too much with their
formulated system — if they could.

They condemned to death, and in their naive
simplicity, to eternal damnation, hundreds of
his prophets and thousands, hundreds of thou-
sands of his splendid, earnest followers, whose
sole offence was a determination to follow
him in his teaching — that the source of in-
spiration, or religion, and of life was within,
and that each in his own way must be true
to his God, by worshipping and serving his
God according to the leadings of his own con-
science.

It is, of course, but just to say that the
mixture of statecraft with religion, of religion
with statecraft, the rivalries for power on the
part of each, the intrigue, the plot and the
counterplot on the part of each, in their strug-

ii8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

gles for worldly power and aggrandisement,
had a great deal to do with this. Unfortu-
nately, however, even to-day, this is not at an
end.

It behooves those of the prophet class, those
who care more for the souls and the welfare
of men than for their own standing or for the
welfare of any organisation, to be awake, to
be doubly armed with the power of the Spirit,
that each new word and revelation of God
made possible and forevermore more easy by
the Galilean Prophet and Saviour, may be
given back with persuasiveness and with power
and with a clear-cut distinctness to the
people.

Hear Jesus' words. How aptly they seem to
apply to the various periods of history between
his time and our time. What a homely and
familiar application they somehow seem to have
almost to-day : " Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye shut up the king-
dom of heaven against men : for ye neither go
in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
entering to go in. . . . Woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build
the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the
sepulchres of the righteous, and say. If we
had been in the days of our fathers, we would
not have been partakers with them in the
blood of the prophets." These lines from

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 119

his splendid poem — " Prophets " — by Ernest
Crosby, hold an eternal truth : *

" Happy the land that knoweth its prophets be-
fore they die!

Happy the land that doth not revile and per-
secute them during their lives !

Was there ever such a land?

We are engaged in the ancient pastime —

Building the monuments of the prophets of
old.

And casting stones at the seers whom we
meet in the streets.

In the world's market one dead prophet is
worth a dozen of the living.

Happy the land that knoweth its prophets be-
fore they die !

And there are prophets to-day, though the

world passes them by unheeding.
Their race is not extinct, and will not be until

we settle down to death.
To them is confided the life of the world.
On the bold startling lines they lay down, the

living structure of the future will grow ;
The nerve-like shapes which they trace in the

amorphous and distorted mass of society

* From " Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable," by
Ernest Crosby. Small, Maynard & Company,
Boston.

120 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

will by and by be centres of visible life,
and take on flesh, and blood.

Happy the land that knoweth its prophets
before they die ! "

VII

JESUS' OWN STATEMENT OF THE ESSENCE

OF RELIGION— HIS OWN DESIGNATION

OF THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY

In addition to Jesus' injunction of love to
God, which he amplified as synonymous with
the Kingdom of God, — the Divine rule, the
rule of God in the mind and heart, outflowing
into all of the activities of the daily life —
his other equally important injunction of
love for man, whom he designated by the
term neighbour, was given concrete illus-
tration to by that other marvellous parable,
answering the question, " Who is my neigh-
bour?" The parable of the Good Samaritan
contains Jesus' clear-cut and marvellously ex-
pressed answer to the question of love to the
brother. This parable and the parable of the
Lost Son, taken in conjunction with Jesus'
clear-cut answer to the question of the lawyer
containing his summary of all religion, con-
tains, we might say, the Christian Religion.

The parable of the Good Samaritan — may it
forever have a diviner meaning for and a
diviner power over us : "A certain man went

121

122 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell
among thieves, which stripped him of his rai-
ment, and wounded him, and departed, leavi';g
him half dead. And by chance there came
down a certain priest that way; and when he
saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the
place, came and looked on him, and passed
by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan,
as he journeyed, came where he was: and
when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
and went to him, and bound up his wounds,
pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his
own beast, and brought him to an inn, and
took care of him. And on the morrow when
he departed, he took out two pence, and gave
them to the host, and said to him. Take care of
him; and whatsoever thou spendest more,
when I come again, I will repay thee. Which
now of these three, thinkest thou, was neigh-
bour to him that fell among the thieves ? "

So plain has Jesus made his meaning in
this brief and homely story, that comment
upon it seems hardly necessary. So oppor-
tune, however, are the following words by a
well-known American minister and writer,
that I am yielding to the impulse to repro-
duce them here.* "In answering this ques-

*" Religion and Life," by Elwood Worcestef.
Harper Brothers, New York.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 123

tion, 'And who is my neighbour?' Jesus did
not trouble himself with the idle query
whether it is possible to love another as we
love ourselves, but he laid his finger on one
of the noblest traits of human nature which
he intended to use as a mainspring of his
religion. ... I suppose and I fear that Jesus
aimed a frightful sarcasm at the clergy and the
sacerdotal order when he represented the
priest and the Levite as calmly going by on
the other side, leaving the wounded man
bleeding on the ground. But this is perfectly
evident: no task and no business in life is
important enough or exacting enough to save
us from the duty of succouring men and
women in distress or from performing those
elementary duties of kindness and compas-
sion which are presented to us every day.
This is the great commandment of the law,
and it is so great that, if broken, the keeping
of the other commandments is of no ac-
count. . . .

" No doubt the priest and the Levite had
duties to perform, and probably they were
religious duties. Very likely the priest was
going down to Jericho to preach to the in-
habitants of that wicked city on the error of
their ways and the Levite was going with
him to read the lesson. We instinctively feel
that the passing by of the wounded man

124 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

rendered that service of no account, and we
cannot help wondering what the priest
preached about that morning — ^probably a ser-
mon on the discipline and rites of the Church,
or on the frame of mind one should be in on the
seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. There is a
very mischievous little beast called the pray-
ing mantis. He looks very devout, a very para-
gon of insects for piety. His arms are ever
folded, and his head bowed as if in prayer;
but let another insect trust these appearances
to approach him, and he becomes a spectre to
affright, and his revenge is like the tiger's
spring. There are many praying mantises in
the world. Some assume that posture to leap
upon their prey. Others are so sunk in their
reverie that they perceive not when men are
perishing."

Yes, the neighbour is not only the one
living in the same house, in the same block, in
the same street or village. It is any one in the
world with whom we come in contact — any
one who crosses our path, whatever his con-
dition, station, or equipment. Wherever there
is a call for service, we fail in doing our duty
when we fail in responding to that call for
service.

This leads us to the very heart of Jesus'
teachings, to the very heart of religion, to
the very heart of Christianity — that is, the

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 125

Christianity that is of the Christ. It is Jesus'
own summary of religion. It is the condensed
statement of all that he taught. It contains
his complete revelation to man. We have al-
ready alluded to it. To refer to it again, as
given in the words of another recorder, will
not be amiss because it is so essentially funda-
mental. On one occasion Jesus said : " Blessed
are the eyes which see the things that ye see :
for I tell you, that many prophets and kings
have desired to see those things which ye see,
and have not seen them; and to hear those
things which ye hear, and have not heard
them." And to have one of the most salient
of questions pertaining to religion and to life
answered, and answered in a clear-cut man-
ner by the great Spiritual Teacher of all
times, is a privilege indeed.

A lawyer, a teacher of religion, or rather an
interpreter of the then prevailing religion, put
to him a most vital question. It was none
other than — " Which is the greatest of all
commandments?" Realising as we do that
the commandments and the law given by the
prophets, and formulated by them into a sys-
tem, was their religion or at least their con-
ception of religion, his question virtually
amounted to this — Master, what is really the
heart or the substance of religion? It was a
unique question and it gave opportunity for a

126 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

unique reply. The answer was not only unique
but more than unique. It constituted, as after
eighteen hundred years we are just beginning
to realise, and as we are yet destined fully to
realise, the greatest statement in the world's
history. " The first of all the commandments
is. Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one
Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength: this is the first commandment."

It is the same teaching that he announced
at the very beginning of his ministry. Love
for the good — a supreme desire for the Divine
reign — for the reign of God in the mind and
heart and life, and therefore the following of
the leadings of the Holy Spirit that directs
every human soul who longs for such direc-
tion and who shows the disposition to follow
it. Jesus' knowledge of human nature was so
comprehensive, and his knowledge of the liabil-
ity of error in human deduction was so keen,
however, that immediately he added — " And
the second is like, namely this. Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself. On these two com-
mandments hang all the law and the prophets.
There is none other commandment greater
than these."

The very foundation, then, of all of the
Christ's teachings, and therefore of true

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 127

Christianity, is love. There are those who say
that Jesus' statement had to do with the old
dispensation — the law, the prophets, the com-
mandments. True, but he distinctly stated
that he came not to destroy the law and the
prophets, but to fulfil them. His purpose was
to supplement the law and the prophets, and
it took the form of an all-embracing spirit,
so to speak.

It was the passing on from the mere verbal
element, the letter, in religion, to the real
spirit in religion, in life, in conduct, and this
is the sole significance of the new dispensation.
This is what constitutes him the Supreme
Teacher. Hear him in these words : " Ye have
heard that it hath been said. Thou shalt love
thy neighbour and hate thy enemy, but I say
unto you. Love your enemy, love them that
curse you ; do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefuUy use you and
persecute you." Were it not for Jesus' teach-
ing of the essential divinity of every human
soul, and the corollary of this, that one life
is different from another life only on account
of a difference in divine self-realisation at any
particular period or time, this teaching of his
would be well-nigh incomprehensible.

His injunction — Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bour as thyself — may seem to many a hard
saying and difficult to understand. If we will

128 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

go deep enough, however, we will find that it
means — the God in you shall recognise and
therefore shall love the God in your neighbour.
Your source, your parentage, is identical — the
Divine Father and Source of all. It is Jesus',
Our Father in Heaven, or. Our Heavenly
Father. We not only can love, but we must
love, this divine image, this real self in every
man whatever his limitation and his errors
and his outward modes of expression at any
particular time.

He is on the way to something higher — as we
are on the way to something higher. He acts
at times through selfish motives, but this is
purely on account of his ignorance, the same
as in other ways we act from selfish motives,
and this is purely on account of our ignorance.
The better we understand the reality of our
being, and therefore the wiser we become, the
more quickly and the more fully we depart
from the selfish motive and from the selfish
course of action. We thought to gain by it.
We find, in reality, that we lose by it. When
Jesus pointed out to us this higher law, this
law of love for hate, he brought to us the
knowledge of a law that would not only serve
our neighbour, but a law that would serve our-
selves still more. In so doing he but antici-
pated some great psychological, and some great
biological laws and forces, that we are just

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 129

beginning to comprehend, to get hold of, and to
use, as we shall see later on.

Similar in insight and in teaching was the
Buddha, he who was so close to Jesus in so
many ways, who upwards of five hundred years
before Jesus' time taught in the same connec-
tion : " A man who foolishly does me wrong, I
will return to him the protection of my un-
grudging love; the more evil comes from him
the more good shall go from me. Hatred does
not cease by hatred ever; hatred ceases by
love."

Love is a tremendous force, a tremendous
power in human life. That is why Jesus so
centred his whole teaching upon it. Take
away the concept, the practice, and the force
of love and you cut the very heart from
Christianity. Jesus' authority for this is su-
preme. And how plainly he states it! How
clearly he states it and reiterates it, so that
no one of the most rudimentary intelligence,
it would seem, could mistake it. " A new
commandment give I you," said he, " that ye
love one another ; as I have loved you, that ye
also love one another." " By this shall all
men know that ye are ray disciples, if ye have
love one to another." That no one can live
in hate and be a follower of the Christ is set
forth as follows : " If any man say, I love
God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for

130 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

he that loveth not his brother whom he hath
seen, how can he love God, whom he hath
not seen?" These are not secondary teach-
ings. They are fundamental.

They are an integral part of the very rock
foundation upon which every teaching and
every act of his life rested. So clear is it, that
it would seem impossible that the intricately
formed schemes of Christianity and of redemp-
tion that began to take form within three
hundred years of his time, and that were sub-
stituted for these teachings which he worked
so hard to inculcate, could ever have taken
form. Had they not taken form and had his
own teachings been placed in the ascendency,
the strange and inhuman things that came
about as a consequence, and in direct violation
of his teachings, could never have come about.
They substituted strange myths and elabo-
rately thought out theories, for his own clear-
cut and simple teachings, for his own clear-cut
and simple life. They tore down the founda-
tion which he builded with infinite patience
and love — they constructed — ^they didn't build
— ^but they constructed another foundation
gathered from many quarters, and upon it they
proceeded to build an institution. Growing
stronger and bolder, they said — Here is your
creed, and cursed be ye if you don't accept it.
The institution became of greater importance

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 131

than the truth which it was supposed to en-
shrine. They then through long centuries pro-
ceeded to hate, to scheme, to gain advantage
over one another; when at times they could
bury their own differences sufficiently — they
proceeded to curse — to damn and finally to
murder, not scores, but thousands and hundreds
of thousands of those who had grasped so much
more fully the real spirit and the real message
of the Divine Teacher, that their intelligence
and their conscience would not permit them
to subscribe or to give allegiance to those
things that they felt were foolish and false and
at times directly contrary to the teachings of
the Master.

What we term the Christian world was woe-
fully retarded through all the centuries on ac-
count of this; and we to-day are far below
what we might be. Century succeeding century,
has placed a series of mile-stones, or of epoch-
stones, marking the gradual advance of man
away from a world and a universe of myth, of
fiat, of caprice, and of authority, exercised
through the medium of blind faith driven by
fear, to a world and a universe of law and order,
wherein rules with absolute precision the law
of cause and effect.

The last fifty years have given us possession
of such laws and such knowledge as makes our
world entirely different from the world of any

132 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

that have gone before us. Where authority
was blindly followed and even unquestioned,
we now ask to see authority's credentials.
Where it can't produce them, authority ceases.

This is nowhere more marked, perhaps, than
in the realm of religion, or rather in the realm
of organised religion. Where they have been
refused, or where they have not stood the test,
and have been therefore unsatisfactory, mil-
lions of thinking men and women have said —
I'm sorry, but you will have to count me out,
for I have something truer and better. More
light on the way that authority was gained has
enabled and is enabling men and women of
determined purpose to say this without the
slightest hesitation and without compunc-
tion.

We scarcely realise as yet what this is mean-
ing for Christianity. It means that thinking
men and women are going directly to the
source, and they are studying the life and the
teachings of God's Messenger for themselves.
They are making their own deductions, and they
are determined to make them untrammelled,
and in the light of modern knowledge. Prac-
tically without exception it can be truthfully
said, they are finding themselves gainers
thereby.

Whether we realise it yet or not, a new re-
ligion is being deduced and formulated from

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 133

the original source. It is the religion of the
Spirit, in distinction from the religion of dogma
— it is the Christianism of the Christ. When
we thus set about in an earnest way to study
his own teachings, clarified so wonderfully as
they are many times by the acts and the prac-
tices of his life, we find many things that the
old Christianity failed to give us, while on
the other hand we fail to find some things that
were perhaps honestly believed as there.

When we get into the real spirit of his teach-
ings, and the spirit of his life, we discover a
certain freshness and vigour and an all-pre-
vailing simplicity that we never dreamed were
there. We find nothing of the fall and the deg-
radation of tnan — nothing of the doctrine of
priginal sin, which makes the individual man
forever displeasing and lost to God's favour,
until some atonement is made for his inherited
sin. The wonderful story of the Lost Son,
which Jesus uses to teach exactly the opposite
of this, makes such a belief as this forever im-
possible for us again.

Follow him in his teachings, day after day
— watch the element of human sympathy
that breathes through all his words and
through all his acts, in connection with
all with whom he came in contact. Re-
call his eager readiness to say — Thy sins, thy
errors be forgiven thee, to the one who had

134 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

sinned and erred — man or woman. Notice his
eagerness to point that one to the way whereby
the reign of God might become supreme in
the mind and heart atid Ufe, so that the de-
sire for sin with its penalties would fall
away.

Notice how he calls the little children about
him. How he welcomes them and loves them.
Notice him as he takes them in his arms, and
turns to his disciples and tells them that they
must become as little children, " For of such
is the Kingdom of God." That does not look
as if he thought they were so degraded, so ir-
retrievably lost as the theologians and the
creed-makers made out, and that they influ-
enced vast millions before us into believing.

It scarcely looks as if he thought that when
a child is born, the mother would have to flee
with it like a wild thing, to an altar, or to a
church, or a cathedral, to have it baptised and
to have a priest mumble something over it be-
fore, by any chance, it should die and its soul
be irretrievably lost. One can hardly get sanc-
tion from this, or from the whole tone and
tenor of the teachings of his life, for the cus-
tom that prevailed even in the early days of our
own country — that of burying unbaptised chil-
dren in a far-off corner of the cemetery, alone
and by themselves, so that they might not con-
taminate the ground where the more fortunate

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 135

ones, the baptised children and others, were
buried.

Calvin and Augustine, good and earnest men
as they were in many ways, evolved an intri-
cate theory in connection with God and his
plan in their speculations and doctrines of
total depravity and of original sin. But they
surely never got it from Jesus. They fashioned
a wonderful weapon to be used by the organisa-
tion upon the minds and the imaginations of
men. It has been productive of rivers of tears,
of oceans of blood, of millions in ecclesiastical
graft ; but I repeat, they never got it from the
teachings of Jesus.

But how simple was his appeal as the love
of God, that he sensed and taught and per-
sonified, breathed through his every word and
act in connection with error and sin — in con-
nection with the one who went wrong — in con-
nection with the sinner. Only stop, and repent,
and turn and recognise God, and let his rule,
his love and his rule become dominant in your
heart. Sin no more, be faithful to the higher
leadings, and the Holy Spirit, the Christ within,
will lead you so that you will lose the desire
for sin — you will find that it doesn't pay. Its
penalties are too exacting. While you are pur-
suing this course in your mistaken ideas and
your desires for pleasure, you are missing the
far more transcendent and lasting pleasures

136 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

that pertain to the higher realms of your
being.

There was never a word about any complex
scheme of salvation to be fulfilled — never a
word about any sacrifice or mysterious atone-
ment to be made, before God's scheme of jus-
tice could be satisfied and man could become
a child of God. No, his whole endeavour was
along the lines of pointing out how a little love
of God, and the desire that his rule be made
the rule of life, would make entrance into the
Kingdom of Heaven and into the righteousness
of God — here and hereafter.

Yes, turn and recognise God whom I reveal
to you — not me, but God. Yes, recognise me,
but recognise me as the revealer of God. I
have found and I show you the way. I have
brought my life into union, into perfect har-
mony with the Father's life, and what I hear
I bring to you. I have found the Kingdom of
God — it is within me — it is within you — it is
within every human soul. It is the greatest
thing there is. It can be had without money
and without price. Possess it. When you pos-
sess it, you possess everything else. All else
that is good follows in its train. " Whosoever
drinketh of the waters that I shall give him,
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall
give him shall be in him a well of water spring-
ing up into everlasting life." " I am the resur-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 137

rection and the life; he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live."

I am the perfect revealer of God, and what
God gives me that I give to you. I am not
God, but I am at one with God. Whatever I
say and do, I say and do by virtue of this re-
lationship with God. This life in God I declare
unto you. So he speaks of the truth he real-
ises and the message he brings, but so far as
he personally is concerned, we find meekness
and lowliness of mind always his distinguish-
ing traits. "Why calleth thou me good?
There is none good but one — that is, God."

We find, as we study him directly, no ab-
struse doctrine of the Trinity such as was
after several centuries evolved by the creed-
makers, and such as became a fundamental doc-
trine that must be believed by those of the
Church. We find the Father — so continually
spoken of by him. We find the son — the Son
of man who, through his God-consciousness,
through his perfect realisation of his Divine
source — of the Christ within, becomes the Son
of God. We find the Holy Spirit, the inner
guide, through which God leads us, first, into
a knowledge of the reality of our being, and
when we live in the constant realisation of
this reality, which becomes an authoritative
guide — ^the higher wisdom that leads us in all
of our ways.

138 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

As we thus study Jesus' own teachings,
we find no mention by him of any peculiarity
in connection with his birth. We find that he
says that he is sent by God — " I came forth
from the Father." We find that the truth
that he teaches, is not his own, but that he
teaches what is revealed to him by the Father.
" My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent
me." We find that he came down out of
Heaven ; that he is from above ; that he is from
above and not of this world — " For I am come
down from Heaven not to do mine own will,
but the will of him that sent me."

Numbers of times Jesus makes the statement
that he is sent into the world by the Father.
In what is called his last prayer, he says —
" As thou didst send me into the world, I also
sent them into the world." He speaks here of
his disciples. No stretch of the imagination
would enable one to believe, however, that when
he speaks thus of sending his disciples on their
mission into the world, that he has any thought
of their coming from some other world into
this world. It is from his own presence that he
sends them into the world to teach the things
that they have learned from him. Under his in-
fluence they are prompted to go forth into the
world, with his message to the world. The
same as he under the divine impulse within,
under the Father's guidance that he has come

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 139

so thoroughly to know, after living quietly at
Nazareth for thirty years, is thus sent by the
Father to declare the things made known to
him by the Father.

The Scripture used the term, heaven, to de-
note the abode of God. It was the language that
the people were accustomed to in connection
with God and the things of God. When Jesus
speaks as having come down out of heaven and
as being from above, and not of this world, he
illustrates again what he means as he speaks of
his disciples. He says that he has given them
God's word, and the world hated them, because
they are not of the world, even as he is not of
the world. More than once he uses this ex-
pression in regard to them. He clearly does
not mean in speaking thus of his disciples
that they have come from another world into
this world, but that their interests are his
interests — they are the things of God. As he is
from above, so they are from above. It is not
a reference to place; it is purely an ethical
reference. It is a reference to character and
to aims.

So when he speaks of his disciples as from
above — the same as he is from above, he
clearly can have no reference to Ms origin,
any more than he would by this and similar
expressions, have reference to his disciples'
origin. He is actuated by the spirit of God,

140 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

not by the things that he terms the things of
the world. In like manner, then, he speaks of
his disciples. And when he says to certain
Jews, " Ye are from beneath — I am from
above," it is evident that he does not mean that
they have come up from some place under-
neath the ground, or that he has come from
some place in the sky. He speaks of them
ethically the same as he speaks of himself
ethically, when he uses such phrases as " come
down out of heaven " and that " he is not of
this world."

To you it is given to know the mysteries
of the Kingdom of God, he said to his disciples.
To teach them fully concerning this Kingdom,
which he spoke of always as an inner King-
dom, that they might go forth and teach the
truths of the Kingdom to others, was his ear-
nest, patient, and never-ceasing work with his
disciples.

We have already referred to the fact that
his revelation was so far beyond the thought of
his time, that even with his disciples he had
great difficulty in making his meanings, or the
meanings of his teachings, clear. As he taught
them, as also the people that gathered around
him, great inner spiritual truths that his won-
derful spiritual sense had perceived, they were
continually applying to them material inter-
pretations and material references. And how

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 141

natural this was, we can readily understand,
when we recall the stratified condition of re-
ligion of the time.

In order to speak intelligibly to them — in
order to make his meanings clear, he had neces-
sarily to use the terms and the language of
their common life ; but how often did he have
to correct them and even chide them, for inter-
preting his words in a purely material sense,
instead of getting from them the great spiritual
truths of life, and an enunciation of the great
laws of life, that he strove so diligently to give
them. " I am the bread of life," he said to those
assembled about him ; " your fathers did eat the
manna in the wilderness, and they died. This
is the bread which cometh down out of heaven,
that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am
the living bread which came down out of
heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall
live forever: yea, and the bread which I will
give is my flesh, for the life of the world." The
Jews, taking his words in a material sense,
argued one with another and said : " How can
this man give us his flesh to eat? " Jesus sim-
ply reaffirmed his statement, saying : " Verily,
verily, I say unto you, except ye eat of the
flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye
have not life in yourselves. . . . For my flesh
is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."
Literally, " My flesh is the true food, and my

142 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

blood is the true drink. He that eateth my
flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and
I in him. As the living Father sent me, and
I live because of the Father, so he that eateth
me, he shall live because of me."

And even his disciples, when they heard him
speak in this way, said among themselves,
" This is a hard saying; who can hear him? " —
who can understand him? Jesus, quickly per-
ceiving that they were again dragging his
words down to a material interpretation, asked
them if what he had just said caused them to
stumble, and then, in order that they get his
real meaning, he said, " It is the spirit that
quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the
words that I have spoken unto you are spirit
and are life."

Those to whom the dogmas of creed have
been or have become stumbling-blocks, and
have kept from them the joys and likewise the
wonderful helps for the daily life that pertain
to the true Christian life, may find a great key
in this saying of Jesus. The truth that it un-
locks and unfolds is that Jesus taught pre-
eminently a Life, and also that no statement
of belief about Jesus can ever constitute a man
a Christian, that is, a Christian fulfilling Jesus'
requirements.

A careful examination into all the leading
creeds or statements of belief in vogue in

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 143

Christianism to-day, will reveal the fact that
they deal almost uniformly with those things
concerning which Jesus was absolutely silent,
while on the other hand they contain prac-
tically none of those things that were his,
not only chief hut fundamental teachings.

Even the so-called Apostles' Creed passes
almost immediately from its statement regard-
ing his miraculous birth, to his sufferings and
his death. On account of some strange absence
of human reason, it passes entirely over — it
omits entirely that which Jesus made the sub-
stance of his own creed — the teachings of his
life, and the works of his life. Even its very
opening statement we might say contains noth-
ing that connects us in any way with Jesus —
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker
of Heaven and Earth. Now Jesus took it for
granted that any thinking human being be-
lieves this. It was the teaching and the belief
of his people for untold generations back.

As a statement it omits entirely what was
to Jesus his great fundamental teaching, that
that constituted his supreme revelation to man,
namely, the intimate personal relations of the
human spirit with the Divine spirit, its source
— the intimate relations of man with God:
Those wonderful filial relations that we, as
children, may sustain with the Heavenly Fa-
ther, that are to be as he taught, substantially

144 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the same as the relations that he sustained
to the Father, and through this, the under-
standing and the using of those great mystic
forces that relate and that play between the
infinite and the finite, when these relations are
rightly made and are fully sustained. The
creed never even makes mention, as prac-
tically none of them do, of that other great
fundamental of Jesus' creed — our relations to,
our love for our fellow-men, and the one sole
test of the manifestation of that love, that of
helpful service for our fellow-men.

The sole test of the Christianism that Jesus
taught, lies in a definite line of action both
Godward and Manward. The Christianism of
Jesus does not even permit us to do the things
that Jesus did, simply tecause he did them.
It goes far deeper than that. It brings us into
such relations with the infinite source of wis-
dom that the voice divine, the Holy Spirit, if
you please, and to use Jesus' own term, illu-
mines and makes clear our course of action at
any and at all times, whatever the crisis that
may arise.

The Christian, therefore, is not called upon
to do precisely the thing that Jesus would do in
precisely the same circumstances. This it
would be utterly impossible to know, much
less to do. The conditions of our time are in
no way to be compared to the conditions of

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 145

his time; but the thing that the Christian is
called upon to do, is so to order his thought
and therefore his life in relation to the divine
life and power, that he be animated and di-
rected by the Christ spirit, in precisely the
same way that Jesus was animated and
directed by it. It is only thus that we fulfil
his supreme test. And whichever door we open
as we study directly the teachings of the Mas-
ter, it opens out upon the same great plain,
with the infinite horizon. Love for God, Love
for our neighbour, and a love compelling sacri-
fice in service. It is the fatherhood of God
in the way that Jesus taught it. It is the
brotherhood of man in the way he taught it,
and it was his life of constant sacrificing serv-
ice, which was to him the path of supreme
joy, to give to these a concrete expression in
his own life.

Thus the Word, the Spirit of Infinite life
and love, became flesh, in that it manifested
itself so clearly and so perfectly in the life of
the son of Joseph and of Mary, they who could
but illy understand the force of his reply, when
as a mere youth they chided him in that he did
not follow more quickly as they were getting
ready to start for home, and who made an-
swer — " Enow ye not that I must le about my
Father's husiness?" Although he realised
himself as the son of Joseph and Mary, after the

146 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

law of the flesh, he realised himself supremely
as the son of his Heavenly Father, after the
law of the Spirit. And that he brought to us
the supreme revelation that the Word may
become flesh in us, in the degree that we real-
ise that we must be about our Father's busi-
ness; is manifest when he said — Be ye there-
fore perfect, even as your Father in heaven
is perfect. We must conclude that one of two
things is true — either that he meant what he
said, and pointed to a Life that it is intended
that we live, or that the chroniclers were not
correct when they reported him as saying this.

If he had any belief in his divinity, on ac-
count of any abrogation of law, and therefore
any miraculous element in connection with his
birth, he not only, as we have already said,
makes no mention of it whatever, much less
does he make it any basis for his unique
revelation and for his life of service. If the
manner of his death likewise had anything to
do with this same revelation, and with the ful-
filment of this same life of service, he like-
wise makes no mention of it in connection with,
or rather as being in any way essential to these.

He met death at the hands of an angry,
entrenched ecclesiastical organisation, because
he was so imbued with the truth that he had
perceived and that his great soul urged him on
to give the world — a truth that was contrary

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 147

to, and that therefore was detrimental to, the
status quo of this organisation, from which
all spirit and all life had already gone. Later,
many years later, when the process of deifica-
tion set in, as occurred also in connection with
others of his time, and the chroniclers began
to connect the far-fetched prophecies of the
Old Testament Scripture with the manner of
his death, a basis was established which the
Church organisation several centuries after-
ward eagerly took advantage of, and an amaz-
ing system embodying a fallen humanity and
an angry God and an atonement through the
shedding of the blood of an innocent victim,
was built up and given body and form in our
numerous creeds, not one of which with their
peculiar contents could ever have taken form,
if Jesus' own, teacMngs had been followed. So
one can believe both the birth and the death
stories of the creeds and the confessions, and
still never touch even the hem of his garment,
which enclosed entirely the part that lay be-
tween the two, — his life.

The real significance of Jesus, therefore, lies
in what he taught, not in what occasioned him,
nor in the peculiar manner of his death. The
Church of the past and up to the present time,
we might almost say, has taken one half— rbelief
in Jesus. We have now reached the time when
we are beginning to take the other half, the

148 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

infinitely more important half, the things that
Jesus taught and lived. It is not faith in his
person, it is faith in the life that he perceived
and embodied, and therefore so effectively
taught.

He stood as the embodiment and the revealer
of a great truth. He said to his hearers: Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free, which put into another form could
be stated thus — Ye shall know the reality of
your being, and through this knowledge you
will find your freedom. He called himself the
servant of truth or rather the " Servant of
the truth." The great emphasis he placed
upon truth and the part that he continually
taught that it must play in human life — that
is, in all effective human living — marked him as
a supreme religious teacher.

No wonder he came in conflict with the es-
tablished religious order. No wonder that later
thousands of his brave and devoted followers
who have caught his spirit — ^who have under-
stood his truth, and who have been ready
for the same sacrifices that he was not only
ready but eager for, if necessary, have come
in conflict with the established religious
order through all the centuries since his
time and right up almost to our own genera-
tion.

Now what is the use, I hear it asked, of

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 149

referring to these things? The past is gone.
Yes, and would to God that the stifling things
of the past had gone with it. Unfortunately,
much still remains ; but the real answer is this
— to show that there is still a great deal in or-
ganised Christianity that Jesus himself knew
nothing of whatever. There are many things
that are mere excrescences, some of them are
the direct antithesis of the life and the teach-
ings of the Christ. They are probably the
cause of a great part of the barrenness of
results of modern Christianity, compared to
the results that Jesus said would follow.

They were formed and they were brought in
to serve certain purposes. They had nothing
to do with Jesus' fundamental truths. They
served to keep men in bondage, and whether it
be bondage to an institution or bondage to a
belief it is immaterial. We have already no-
ticed the scathing words of denunciation that
Jesus used in regard to an institution, or in
regard to the representatives of an institution,
whose efforts were to bind the consciences of
men and therefore the lives of men, to the
teachings of that institution, instead of the one
supreme thing that he taught, that the mind
and the spirit should be bound to -God alone.
These also served to keep God's light and
God's leading and sustaining power from the
soul — they robbed the soul of its birthright.

ISO IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the birthright that was proclaimed so clearly
and so insistently by the Christ.

And what is this birthright? The answer
to the question is the opening of the same
door that looks out upon the plain with the
infinite horizon — the realisation of the same
divinity within us that was realised by him-
self, the coming into the same filial relations
with the Father that he came so fully into
harmonious relations with — the seeking, the
realisation of, the living in the Kingdom.

I like these words from a recent address of
one of the foremost preachers and writers of
our time. They are significant of what the
earnest forward-looking men, and in goodly
numbers, in our churches are to-day thinking
and are daring to say. Moreover he is a Bap-
tist. He is one, however, who believes with
Jesus, that the realisation of the life is the
thing, and that the way to this realisation is
of but minor importance. With him, therefore,
it may be immersion or sprinkling, sprinkling
or immersion. Moreover it may be either,
neither, or both.

But here are his words : * " The unique thing

* From an address delivered before the International
y.M.C.A. Training School, by Dr. J. Herman Ran-
dall, pastor Mount Morris Baptist Church, New York;
author of " A New Philosophy of Life," " Humanity
at the Cross-roads," etc. Dodge Publishing Co., New
York.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 151

about Jesus was His consciousness of God.
This is what makes Him divine ; not because of
any miracles, not because of any story of His
birth, but because He possessed, as no other
character in history, the God-consciousness.
' My meat and drink is to do the will of God.'
He felt that the will of God was expressed
through His will ; that God's thought was ex-
pressed through His thought; that even His
love flowed forth from the ultimate source of
all love. He had become clearly awakened
to the fact that His consciousness did not stand
in isolation, that it went down to the universal
consciousness and became one with God.
Jesus said that what was true of Him might
be true of all men and women. The same God
who dwelt in Him dwells in us. The differ-
ence between Him and us is a quantitative not
a qualitative difference. We may attain to
the consciousness of God even as He was con-
scious of God. This is the deeper meaning
of His message. The place of Jesus in history
becomes more clear and luminous than ever
before when we separate Him from the theo-
logical wranglings of the past and think of
Him as representing the highest possibilities
of human life. His personality is the goal
of our human personality. His consciousness
of the indwelling God is the ideal for the un-
folding of our consciousness within.

IS2 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

" Whether the idea of the immanent God be
new to us or not, the deepening of our per-
sonal experience will come, in just the degree
in which we can grow into the consciousness
that God is within. . . . Jesus came to bear
His witness to the consciousness of God in
human life, and then He disappears from the
stage of human history, but the consciousness
of God in the lives of men continues forever."

Among the last words that came to us
through the gracious soul of that earnest and
sincere scholar, Auguste Sabatier, are these
that relate to faith in Christ : " Faith in Christ
does not mean the acquiring of a particular
notion of God ; it means the living over again,
within ourselves, the inner spiritual life of
Christ, to feel the presence of the Eternal
Father and the reality of our filial relation to
him, just as Jesus felt in himself the Father's
presence and his filial relation to him."

And so faith in Jesus is not a belief in the
statements of the numerous and various creeds
and confessions about Jesus, any more than
to be a follower of Jesus is to be a worshipper
of his person. If one makes his faith a belief
in those things that no man knows,* especially

*It is interesting at times to recall the reply of
a theological student who was once asked for a
definition of faith. "Faith," said he, "is the power
by which we are enabled to believe something that
we know is not true."

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 153

those things that he never concerned him-
self with, we miss everything in connection
with him and with his teachings that is worth
while. It must be something that embodies
itself fundamentally in the daily life — some-
thing that embodies itself in character, and
conduct is the logical, if not indeed the only
portrayal and evidence of character. It is, we
might say, its sole method of expression.

To be a follower of Jesus does not even mean
that he is necessarily a member of an organi-
sation. It may, or it may not : it depends en-
tirely upon the individual and upon the organi-
sation. He must be a member of the Kingdom
— something broader than the Church —
broader, infinitely broader, than any ecclesi-
astical organisation at least has ever been.

VIII

WAS THE CHURCH SANCTIONED OR ES-
TABLISHED BY JESUS AND IS IT OF
MAJOR OR OF MINOR IMPORTANCE?
—IS THERE SOMETHING MORE
IMPORTANT THAT HE EN-
JOINED?

A study of Jesus' own life and teachings as
we are advocating, in order to get a basis of
real fellowship with him, reveals the fact that
in the first three Gospels alone, the Kingdom
of Heaven that he so insistently said that he
came to reveal and to lead men into the
realisation of, is mentioned by him some thirty
times. The word Church, or anything that
could possibly be construed to mean the
Church, is mentioned in the entire four Gos-
pels twice. One mention refers clearly to the
Jewish Church that was already established.
The other mention is his use of the word
ecclesia, in his reported conversation with
Peter.

Many circumstances in connection with this
reported saying of Jesus are looked upon by
many eminent Bible scholars as at least sus-
154

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 155

picious. It is regarded by some as an inter-
polation fixed upon when the canon of the
New Testament Scripture was finally decided
upon, to give a greater semblance of authority
to the ecclesiastical organisation that was
finally evolved and formulated. To think that
Jesus, giving his whole time during the period
of his ministry, to the teaching of the King-
dom, should all of a sudden depart from this
and give sanction, even explicit direction, for
the forming of an organisation to be estab-
lished in his name, seems well-nigh incredible.

It seems doubly so on account of the fact
that he never referred to it again, and he
never, apparently, thought it necessary to give
any direction or even any suggestion as to the
order or the form of an organisation. Know-
ing the horror that he had of the almost
inevitable stratification that later takes place
in organisations and especially in religious
organisations, as is evidenced by practically
his only words of condemnation, it is easy to
see how incredible the claim seems, or appears
to be.

It was one day when they were in Cssarea
Philippi that Jesus asked his disciples, say-
ing : " ' Whom do men say that I, the Son of
man, am? ' And they Said, ' Some say John
the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jere-
miah, or one of the prophets.' He said unto

iS6 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

them: 'But who say ye that I am?' Simon
Peter answered and said, ' Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God.' Jesus answered
and said unto him — ' Blessed art thou, Simon
Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not re-
vealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
Heaven. And I also say unto thee. That thou
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church; and the gates of hades shall not pre-
vail against it.' "

If some supernatural or divine authority had
not been so industriously searched for after
the Church organisation took form, it would
have been apparent, had they made this state-
ment of Jesus consistent with all of his other
teachings and acts, that what Jesus meant was
that upon this fact that Peter gave utterance
to, namely, that he was the Christ, the Messiah,
Jesus would build the ecclesia, the society of
his followers.

His supreme judgment, his supreme knowl-
edge of human nature, the absolute univer-
sality of all of his teachings, would indicate
that it would be well-nigh impossible for him
so suddenly to change his method and his mes-
sage, and give in so many words direction for
the establishing of an organisation in his name,
especially knowing how it might be used and
from his own observation how in all prob-
ability it would be used.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 157

And when we consider the great complex
organisation that several centuries later was
superimposed by Rome upon the simple faith
and the simple organisation of the Church of
the Disciples, when she stopped persecuting
the members of the early and original Church
and decided to annex Christianity, we can see
how enormously and how grotesquely it de-
parted from the simple, open-air hillside teach-
ings of Jesus, and his thoroughly spiritual
but all-embracing teachings of man's intimate
direct personal relations with the Father, with-
out any intermediary except himself as the
revealer of these relations, and of man's rela-
tions with his fellow-men — the direct out-
growth and the flowering of this teaching. To
that rapidly growing number throughout the
world who believe that the great crisis that
Christianity is now facing, means that we are
going to go back to Jesus' own direct teachings,
and that we are going to free ourselves, and
the Church to a great extent, from the ancient
teachings about him, these words of the noted
historian and writer, Goldwin Smith,* will
be doubly illuminating:

"The word ecclesia, translated in our ver-
sion 'church,' is twice found in the Gospels,
where it has rather a strange look; one of
the two places being that upon which the

*"The Founder of Christendom," by Goldwin Smith.

iS8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

claim of the Papacy is founded. We can-
not help doubting whether it came from the
lips of Jesus. But if it did, he cannot have
meant general councils, consistories, synods,
and courts of ecclesiastical law; for he says
that where two or three are gathered together
in his name, there will he be in the midst of
them. We can imagine nothing more alien
to his mind than the form which, in later ages,
the Church assumed. But if Christianity was
not to be only a school of thought, like
Stoicism or Platonism, but a spiritual society
formed for mutual aid in godly living and the
formation of a religious character, organisa-
tion was indispensable. Organisation neces-
sarily implied authority. By a process easily
divined if not historically recorded, authority,
originally vested in the congregation, gradu-
ally centred in the bishops, to consecrate
whose exaltation Apostolical Succession was
devised. Ultimately, by a process not less
natural, it was engrossed by the Bishop of
Rome. . . . The office of the Twelve and
that of the Seventy was clearly not ecclesias-
tical but missionary.

" Formalism of all kinds Jesus abhors. Ap-
parently he would have disliked ritual, liturgi-
cal prayer-books, formal worship of all kinds.
He seems to exclude them by enjoining the
ever memorable prayer which we must trust

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 159

oral tradition to have faithfully handed down.
Expansion, in this respect, liturgical and aes-
thetic, when worship came to be a regular and
collective function, could not be avoided,
though it might have stopped short of the
prayer-mill. No dogmatism is put into the
mouth of Jesus by the Gospels. Dogmatism
could hardly exist before his deification. . . .
When the Church unhappily, though perhaps
inevitably, had been united to the empire,
orthodoxy became law, and heresy, alas, be-
came treason. Desperate were the shifts to
which the Church in her darker days was put
in her effort to extract from the sayings of
Jesus anything like warrants for persecution
and mandates for the Inquisition. . . . Hatred
for formalism and legalism, as deadly enemies
of genuine godliness, brought the Founder of
Christendom into collision with the Pharisees,
whom he denounces as hypocrites, whited
sepulchres, destroyers of souls, with a vehe-
mence startling in one so full of loving-kind-
ness. Talmudic Judaism, with its tithing of
mint and cummin and its neglect of the
spiritual law, recognised its mortal enemy in
Jesus. It sought to discredit him before he,
invading its citadel, enabled it to take his
life."

In addition to distinctly stating that his
sole purpose was to bring men into a knowl-

i6o IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

edge of the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom
of Heaven, which he persistently identified as
an inner experience and life, Jesus then uses
the expression upwards of thirty times in the
first three Gospels alone, as we have already
stated. Any expression that could be identi-
fied with the word Church as an organisation,
as we understand it, he uses but twice. Prac-
tically every act of his life, and every teach-
ing, groups itself around the former. That
it was pre-eminently a life that he taught be-
comes abundantly clear, as we follow directly
his teachings and directly his life.

Even the word religion we do not find that
he uses even once, at least in his recorded say-
ings. As he found infinitely more interest in
contemporary events than he did in the re-
ligious orders or the religious teachings of his
day, it is not difficult to surmise what he would
find chief interest in in this our day. As he
endeavoured to free the people from the mere
letter of the organised ecclesiasticism of his
day, as he taught them that it was far more
valuable and far more essential that they so
order their lives that the living God might
speak directly to their own souls through the
agency of what he taught as the Holy Spirit,
so he unquestionably would teach to-day.

His question taking almost the form of a
command — Why judge ye not of yourselves

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND i6i

what is right? is as true to-day as it was then.
It seems to me infinitely more true. We have
almost an infinite advantage over those of the
earlier days — even the disciples of Jesus — on
account of the great advances we have made in
science and in discovery, whereby we have had
revealed to us many of the great laws under
which God works; and now through a well-
established knowledge of the fact that he
works only through law, science has freed us
from many of the illusions that were fostered
and formulated, and were made use of in hold-
ing the people in authority, even during the
early centuries of the Christian Church.

Our older idea of the supposed conflict be-
tween science and religion is rapidly passing.
We are finding that they are but two methods
of reading or of understanding God, or rather
the methods and the laws through which he
manifests and works, not only in the universe
about us, but also in the lives of individuals.
" There can be no true religion," says a
thoughtful writer, " which teaches us to shut
our eyes to one scrap of knowledge or to one
ray of truth." And it was Emerson who said :
" Science corrects the old creed and necessi-
tates a faith commensurate with the grander
orbit and universal laws which it discloses."

He who is a worthy follower of the Christ,
will recognise and will make use of every

i62 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

good that there is in our modern Christian
institutions, and he will help to sustain and
to build them up. He will, however, not
shirk his duty any more than did the Master
shirk his duty, in endeavouring with others to
eliminate that which is false, that which has
already long ago served its purpose, that which
would stand between the soul and the light
through which God reveals himself directly
to the individual soul; that which would get
hold of men and women when they are chil-
dren, and at an impressionable and unreason-
ing age, get their consent and allegiance, and
then seek to bind their consciences to ancient
creeds whose purport in some religious per-
suasions at least is, that the Church is the
thing, that it should have obedience, and
even that only through it can salvation come.
The true follower of the Christ is called
upon to do the same valiant service to-day,
as other valiant followers in goodly numbers
have done before us. With them it was the
freeing of men's minds, and the freeing of
their lives from abuses that became at times
well-nigh intolerable. With us it is the free-
ing of men's spirits by an adequate realisation
of the full content of Jesus' great revelation
and teaching, and thereby a participating, a
bringing over from potentiality into actuality,
the great spiritual and mystic forces that per-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 163

tain to and that are continually operating in
the realm of the divine.

That Christian experience cannot be alone
personal, that as it manifests itself Godward,
it will to a corresponding degree manifest
itself manward, is abundantly and most con-
cretely typified in Jesus' life. During his brief
ministry he was ceaselessly doing his Father's
will and works. He mingled continually with
all classes, doing all good. He healed them of
their infirmities when there was need for this
service. He taught them the boundless meas-
ure of God's love, which was an entirely new
revelation to them. He taught them that suf-
fering is the wage of sin, and that if persisted
in it is death. He taught that within each is
a spiritual realm, that links us with the Divine
— our origin and our source. He taught them
that to live life from this centre, was to unify
their lives with the one creative force, and
therefore to live in harmony with the laws of
this creative force, which works always for
our good in the degree that we seek to know
and to obey the laws through which it works,
and thus work in conjunction with them.

He found such teachings given forth by
some of the older Hebrew prophets, his prede-
cessors, who had so ordered their thought, and
therefore their lives, that the voice of God
could speak through them. " They that wait

i64 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they
shall mount with wings as eagles; they shall
run and not be weary ; they shall walk and not
faint." " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on thee: because he
trusteth in thee." Their religious life then be-
came formulated and stereotyped. The people
were taught that the voice of God had ceased to
speak. They believed it, and for close to three
hundred years no prophet had spoken. They
believed that the faith had been already all
delivered. The sole object of the Church,
then, was to preserve the thing once delivered.
The spiritual dearth and death that then en-
sued, we are familiar with.

The God-illumined soul of Jesus recognised
and keenly realised this. So filled was he with
his great consciousness of the union, of the
essential oneness of the human with the divine,
and the working of the divine in and through
the human, that he realised himself as the
Messiah, the leader of his people, out of their
mental and their spiritual bondage. In doing
this, he not only taught the positive truth that
he taught, but wherever he saw that it hindered,
he did not hesitate to denounce the organised
religion that was absolutely dominant at the
time, and that was feeding the people husks
instead of the life-giving grain.

His clear insight, however, enabled him to

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 165

see that through this course he would not
only incur the displeasure, but in time the
deep-seated hatred of Scribe and Pharisee.
His own message of the Kingdom of Heaven,
his own conception and his own presentation
of the truly religious life, must necessarily
oppose itself to the religion of form and cere-
mony and the preserving of the faith once de-
livered, that was dominant at his time. As
he went along farther in his ministry, he be-
gan to realise that sooner or later a definite
attempt would be made to crush him. He
receded not a bit, and he was ready for what-
ever came.

His course finally brought denunciation, in-
trigue, and condemnation. He was true to
the light that led him on ; and then they killed
him. He was nailed to the cross, which was
the customary Roman method of executing
felons and of dealing with gross disturbers of
the peace and violators of the law or alleged
violators of the law in his day. Rather than be
silent when he burned within to give his great
message of redemption to the world, he went
valiantly forward, he met his fate willingly,
though we can perhaps scarcely say cheerfully.

He felt that his disciples, whom he had
laboured with so diligently to instruct in the
matters of the Kingdom, would go out and
would carry his message to Jew, to Gentile,

i66 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

and then eventually to all the world — small as
it was, or small as the known world was at his
time. He looked for a continuance of life be-
yond this life, and he so taught his disciples.
Although he had experienced great difficulty
in getting his disciples to catch the real
spiritual content of his teachings, instead of
the material interpretations they were so prone
to give them, he felt that in his absence they
would be less dependent upon him. He felt
that the Father would then send them the
Holy Spirit in greater degree, that they might
be more divinely guided in going out to pro-
claim his message. The very last moment of
his life gave a concrete illustration to the
force of his teachings and the way they had
encompassed his own life. Abounding faith
asserted itself. Father, into thy hands I com-
mend my Spirit. Godward. Father forgive
them, for they know not what they do. Man-
ward. There were moments when the human
almost got the mastery of his God-conscious-
ness. So supreme, however, was his realisa-
tion that it triumphed — through to the end.
Although Jesus clearly foresaw his death,
and spoke frequently of it, he never attributed
any significance to it apart from his life. He
saw it as the outcome of his braving to teach
the things that he taught and to do the things
that he did, in the face of the entrenched

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 167

ecclesiastical organisation and rule of his time,
knowing that eventually they would seek to
crush him and thereby, in their ignorance, his
message.

He undoubtedly also felt, after he realised
that his death was inevitable if he persisted
in his course, that it would put a certain seal
upon his life-work, and he was willing thus to
give his life as " a ransom for many." But
during his life he had actually done this. He
had brought a new life to man; he had made
the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and
the active participation of the individual in
the life of this kingdom known. This he said
continually was the purpose of his life and
his ministry. By his teaching and by his
gracious, patient presence with them, he had
made known the Father, and through it all,
they who would had come into possession of
a new life. They thereby had been ransomed
from the power of sin and from the result of
sin, and he imposed no other conditions.
Through the imparting and the utilisation of
this knowledge the atonement had been made
— the atonement had become a fact.

As says a recent writer in connection with
the conception of the atonement on the part
of thinking people to-day : " The modern con-
ception of atonement is therefore not that of
salvation by the penal substitution of the inno-

i68 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

cent for the guilty, but a vital participation
of Christ to the life of humanity, whereby a
redemptive energy of a v^onderful kind
breathes into the life of men, and brings
them to the potentialities of their being." Nor
can we believe, knowing Jesus' knowledge of
law and the sustaining power that this knowl-
edge gave him, that his death on the cross,
which he met so unflinchingly, was that grue-
some thing, filled with such unspeakable
agonies of suffering, that later ecclesiastical
art and images devised for the purpose of
rivetting the attention of the people on his
death, gave to us.

Thousands of men since his time, with but
a faint knowledge of the potential powers
within them, and with a purpose not a hun-
dredth part as clearly defined as was his pur-
pose, have gone to their death bravely and un-
flinchingly, and without a moment's hesitation.
Their ideal, wisely or unwisely founded, as
the case may be, has sustained them and has
moved them unflinchingly to that point.

While the supreme test of a man's ideal or
belief or purpose be that he be willing and
ready to lay down his life for his friends,
or for that in which he believes, the systems
that were formulated in the after ages, were
so constructed as to make his death eclipse
his life ; and when his latter life and his death

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 169

were primarily fixed upon, when the Church
beliefs were evolved and formulated and
were prepared to be taught, the second great
tragedy of Jesus' life occurred.

The first was, as we have already seen, the
constant tendency on the part of his disciples,
and of his immediate hearers, to miss the real
vital spiritual content of his teachings and to
drag them down through purely material in-
terpretations. The second was that the great
work of his life, that he so distinctly stated
was the purpose and the end of his ministry,
should be almost completely passed over and
that his death and the suffering incident to
his death, undoubtedly immensely magnified,
and both mere incidents in his life, should be
made paramount. And thereby has a great in-
jury been perpetrated, not only to himself, but
to those things that he held so dear, so dear
even that he was willing to lay down his life
that they might become known, and that they
become engrafted in the consciousness of men,
thereby releasing a great redemptive energy
into the world ; but it has also been an injury
to all succeeding generations, in that a specu-
lative system, built later upon his suffering
and his death, has had the effect of almost
entirely eclipsing his life and the great pur-
pose for which it stood.

When, then, generations later he came to

170 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

be deified and worshipped, a propaganda of
enigma, subtleties, and mysteries was entered
upon, followed by grotesque and interminable
discussions, and these in turn followed by
hatred, persecution, and killings, which show
of themselves that the foundation seized upon
was totally false. Although the loss to the
people that has resulted from this course has
been incalculable, when we become acquainted
with the thought and the customs of the time,
we see that in some measure at least it is
easy that it be forgiven. Our earliest creeds
and our earliest Church canons were formed
by men of Greco-Roman demi-God ideas, with
a considerable share of pagan beliefs and prac-
tices. When Christianity was annexed by
Rome, Rome was purely pagan, and she made
no pretence of anything else. Even Constan-
tine, later called The Great, under whose rule
Christianity was annexed by Rome and made
the State religion, was quite as much pagan
after his announced conversion to Christianity
as before. It was after he became a Christian
that he put to death his wife and his son.

His interest in Christianity, now growing in
power and in influence, was chiefly that he
might use it as an agency in uniting the war-
ring factions in his Empire; that he was in-
fluenced to a great extent by this reason, is
seen in his action at the Council of Nicea, at

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 171

which gathering, in 325, the Nicean Creed, the
first real creed, was formed. Here the first
statements concerning Jesus and the Church
on any extensive scale, and on any authorita-
tive basis, were formulated. The Nicean Creed
is a product primarily of Greek thought, and
in it the doctrine of the Trinity finds full
expression.

Growing out of the not uncommon thought
even in regard to others, the supernatural
element in Jesus had gradually been taking
form, and as the idea of the Trinity took
shape, it was finally decided that he was God,
that is, it was officially so decided. Mary
thereby became the Mother of God, and Mary's
mother, Anne, became the grandmother of God.
Later there grew up a large organisation, the
Society of St. Anne, and she was also wor-
shipped. Then arose and continued for cen-
turies the interminable discussions regarding
the Trinity, and the innumerable questions,
unknown and unknowable, that arose out of
it. Some of the Church Fathers refused to
acknowledge that Jesus was God when he was
a three-months-old baby crying in his mother's
arms. There also arose the question whether
Jesus was God when still in his mother's
womb, and if not God, what God was doing in
the meantime. These are but samples of what
the Church, after it began to formulate its

172 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

extensive creeds, had to deal with and did deal
with.

The fact that these things were not espe-
cially related, or rather not vitally related, to
the problems of every-day life, is perhaps one
reason why the great spiritual dearth in the
Church that soon came about, did come about.
It may be one reason, also, why the type of
reasoning that we see manifested on the part
of those in authority even during the Middle
Ages came about — a type of reasoning that
formulated many public proclamations that
had to be accepted and believed by the people.

The famous Bull Unam Sanctam, issued by
Pope Boniface VIII in 1302, just before the
birth of Wiclif, is a typical example of
mediaeval bible exegesis. Of this the well-
known contemporary historian and bible
scholar. Dr. Gilbert,* says: "This Bull seeks
to prove from Scripture that the Church is
one, and that out of it no salvation is pos-
sible. This is accomplished by three pas-
sages. The first is from the Song of Solomon
(6 : 9) : — ' My love, my undefiled, is one.' This
is taken to mean the mystical body of Christ.
The second passage is from Genesis (6: 13-16).
The ark of Noah symbolised the Church, and
as there was but one ark, so there is but one

* " Interpretation of the Bible," by George Holley
Gilbert, Ph.D., D.D. The Macmillan Co., New York.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 173

Church; and the fact that the ark was finished
' in one cubit ' meant that one Noah (i.e., the
Pope of any particular age) was the helms-
man. And finally when the psalmist says
(22 : 20) : —

'Deliver my soul from the sword;
My darling from the power of the dog,'
he means by ' soul ' Christ himself, and by
' darling ' he means the Church, whose one-
ness is also plainly signified by the seamless
garment of Jesus."

In a summary of the methods of biblical
interpretation in the Middle Ages, he also says
in part : " In the mediaeval period of the
Church, as in the Talmudic period of the
Synagogue, an orthodox theology, resting on
tradition which was interpreted and backed by
ecclesiastical authority, discountenanced or
anathematised independent investigation of
Scripture. As among the Jews of the Tal-
mudic period the Old Testament was to be
read by the light of the authorised interpreta-
tion, so in the mediaeval period the entire Bible
was to be read, if at all, through the eyes of the
Fathers. And so it came to pass that the
influence of the Fathers on the conceptions of
Christian theology immeasurably surpassed
the influence of Christ and his apostles."

Although the Nicean Creed was formed to
fix the teachings of Christianity, the discus-

174 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

sion centred chiefly around the nature of Jesus.
The two chief factions were Arius and his fol-
lowers, and Athanasius and his followers.
Arius maintained that " Jesus was the high-
est of God's creatures, and yet there was a
time when he was not, so he was not equal
with God." Athanasius insisted that " Jesus
was of the very same substance with the
Father." It was a notable assembly of 318
bishops, with crowds of attendant clergy and
sympathisers. It represented the entire
Church, and they gathered from all quarters.
Stormy and violent, however, were the de-
bates. Intense feelings were aroused. Docu-
ments were torn to pieces in actual struggles.
One aged bishop, the historians say, inflicted
a blow upon a heretic's ear. But the situation
was critical, for Constantine had only re-
cently legalised Christianity, and any radical
divisions in the Church might react disas-
trously upon the Empire. The Emperor made
it known that he expected sotnething definite
to result from the convocation. He did not
care for the discussion of doctrine, nor for the
advance of truth. He did care, however, that
the schism which had already started in the
Church, come to an end, in order that his rule
might not be in danger. He cast his influence
and his lot with Athanasius and his party, and
the Nicean Creed was formed.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 175

It was the first authoritative statement of
faith that received the endorsement or the
sanction of representatives of the entire
Church. It became the basis for succeeding
centuries of Church faith and the bulk of it
still stands to-day. It crystallised the various
theories that had been growing in regard to
Jesus during the two preceding centuries. I
have referred to it here, although very briefly
and inadequately, because it throws light upon
the fact that it evolved and put into authorita-
tive, absolutely authoritative form, certain
things about Jesus that were entirely unknown
to him, to his disciples, and to all of his own
immediate time.

There was a custom of the time that we
should not lose sight of. The Romans had
various Gods. Not infrequently a human, on
account of some unusual characteristic or
trait, gradually became deified and became
either a semi-God or a God. Things were
then formulated about him for which there was
no basis whatever. Deification of an indi-
vidual, which would be well-nigh impossible
with us, or rather to start with us, was an easy
and a natural thing with them. A great leader
or a favourite emperor was many times thus
dealt with by them. The following words
by the noted English bible historian and
writer. Professor Carpenter, throws much light

176 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

upon this matter. After portraying the vari-
ous miracles that in after ages grew up in
connection with the birth, the life, and the
death of Buddha, after his deification, and the
corresponding gross corruptions of his teach-
ings that took place, and after stating that
from the age of the Buddha to the last cen-
tury the glamour of miracle shines round
the long succession of India's teachers, he
says : *

"The lives of Christian saints are adorned
again and again with the same tissue of mar-
vel. No long time is needed for its growth.
The freedman of the Emperor Augustus re-
lated that wondrous portents had heralded his
master's birth. The Roman Senate, warned
of coming danger to their power, resolved that
no child born that year should be reared. A
little later it was affirmed that the mother of
the future ruler of Rome had conceived in the
temple of Apollo. Even during his own life-
time the most exalted attributes were
ascribed to him. A German archaeological ex-
pedition in Asia Minor in the last decade of
the last century discovered some remarkable
inscriptions among the remains of the ancient
cities Halicarnassus and Priene, Apameia and
Eumeneia. They were concerned partly with

*"The Historical Jesus and the Theological
Christ," by J. Estlin Carpenter, D.Litt., D.D.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 177

the introduction into Asia of the Julian calen-
dar, and partly with the institution of a gen-
eral holiday on the birthday of Augustus, Sep-
tember 23rd. The historian Mommsen re-
ferred them to the year 11 or 9 B.C. Very
noteworthy is the employment of the word
evangelia, glad tidings or gospels ; ' the birth-
day of the god is become the beginning of
glad tidings through him to the world.' He
is designated ' the Saviour of the whole human
race ' ; he is the beginning of life and the end
of sorrow that man was ever born ; he has been
sent by Providence to put an end to war ; and
peace prevails on earth and sea. When such
hopes gathered round the reigning Caesar, was
it surprising that he should be regarded as a
very impersonation of Deity? An inscription
at Philas described him as ' star of all Greece
who has arisen as great Saviour Zeus ' ; while
the echoes of Egyptian theology are heard in
the preceding language which calls him ' Zeus
out of Father Zeus.' Yet no one doubts the
humanity of Augustus, or the solid reality of
his imperial sway."

But why, one asks, deal longer, or why deal
at all with these matters, for there are very
few people to-day who are held either by
Church doctrine or by the creeds? True, and
not true. While it is utterly inconceivable that
any body of men, that is free men and with

178 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the most ordinary intelligence, in the light
of our modern knowledge, could formulate
such statements of belief and such codes of
doctrine, as were formulated by those of cen-
turies ago, it is nevertheless true that our
Church organisations still hold on to many of
those things that intelligent people of the pres-
ent time feel are of no importance, and other
things that they feel are absolutely untrue, and
that are directly contrary to the teachings of
the Christ,

The fact that we retain them simply be-
cause they have to do with religion, or at least
with Church organisation, acts detrimentally
in two ways. It keeps from the people, espe-
cially in those churches where their retention
is the most fully insisted upon, those great
spiritual truths and forces for use in the daily
life, the revelation of which Jesus, made the
great purpose of his life. Their minds are
diverted to inconsequential things about him.
They are thereby robbed of the finest truths and
the finest fruits of Christianity. On the other
hand, it keeps a rapidly increasing number of
people numbering now unquestionably millions
throughout Christendom — clear-thinking and
God-aspiring men and women — from active
participation in Christian fellowship, because
they believe not only in honesty of thought,
but they believe also in honesty of statement.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 179

They insist upon a word-form that is con-
sistent with our modern knowledge and con-
sistent with twentieth-century methods of
thought.

But this very attitude of mind is pushing
them beyond prevailing Church belief and
Church holdings, and under freer types of
leadership, yes, more modern types, if you
please, they are entering into participation of
the results of the teachings of the Christ be-
cause they are going directly to him and to
his teachings untrammelled by theories, or
bulls, or dictums about him. It seems too bad
that this splendid body of men and women are
not working side by side, and hand in hand,
with our Church organisation, with its great
possibilities, so far beyond what it is able to
realise, or at least what it is actually realising
to-day.

The splendid body of men in our ministry
to-day, the great bulk of whom feel handi-
capped by the remnants of the load of pre-
mediaevalism that the Church carries to-day,
and that they perforce are made to share in,
should also be considered. We must realise
and realise clearly that the conditions to-day
in connection with Christianity are different
from what they have been at any time in its
history. A wonderfully advancing science
has freed us from things that bound the

i8o IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

imagination and that bound the minds, almost
universally, of those before us.

A vital and a supremely healthy interpre-
tation of Jesus' life and teachings is being
made by agencies outside of the Church.
There is a tremendous demand and an insistent
demand for a restatement of Christian thought
and practice, based upon the teachings and the
practices of the Christ, in place of that partly
meaningless and that questionable statement
that we now have, formulated by pre-mediae-
val minds, who in order to make an accept-
able and an authoritative Church doctrine,
were so intent upon formulating things
about the Christ, that they dropped from
mind almost entirely the teachings of the
Christ.

The vast majority of men in our ministry
are forward-looking men and men of earnest
purpose — men who realise what is going on
inside and outside of the Church. They feel
the handicap under which they are compelled
to labour. It is the duty of the great laity in
Christendom, to stand for and to stand with
them, so that when our Church Councils meet,
a group of men with their faces to the past,
and deaf evidently to both the present and to
the future, do not impede the freeing of the
larger number from the incubus of ecclesias-
tical statements that are to-day not only value-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND i8i

less, but that are positively and actively ener-
vating.

It would seem that we had reached the time
when it would not be so difficult to change
those things that we have outgrown and that
become positive hindrances even though they
have to do with religion, or with something
connected with religion. It would seem as
if the example of Jesus would be at least of
some slight help in this regard. To think that
one who fought with all the powers of his
brave, intrepid, illumined soul against the
formulated dogmas of ecclesiasticism, that the
spirit of man might be freed and that he might
come into possession of his real heritage as
was revealed by him, could sanction for a
moment the dogmas of ecclesiasticism of the
ages that succeeded him, and that in some
cases, or rather in some organisations, remain
to-day more deadly than those he so bitterly
condemned and refused obedience to, is en-
tirely beyond human comprehension.

The example of his own life in this respect
should be a tremendous help to us, in doing
those things that are so insistently called for
to-day, that Christ's truth and thereby his
Kingdom may spread to their widest limits.
Clear-thinking and independent acting men
who, under the direct ministry of Jesus' teach-
ings, have realised the Christ within, and who

i82 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

thereby have freed themselves from the
shackles of tradition and of outward authority,
are to-day in increasing numbers speaking
vital words and doing vital things, that are
becoming sources of inspiration and are be-
coming calls for action on the part of many
others.

IX

OUR DEBT TO THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL:

AS THE DIVINE VOICE SPOKE TO

AND THROUGH THEM SO IT

SPEAKS TO-DAY

And so this young Palestinian Jew, the son
of Mary and of Joseph, the carpenter, this
Jesus who, through the supreme consciousness
of the reality of his being, became the Christ,
this Jesus who was the culmination, the per-
fect flowering of a long line of illustrious
Hebrew prophets, of a race that stands in his-
tory uniquely related to the highest revela-
tions in religion, is coming to-day, as never
before, into his own. It is because men and
women of thought and purpose are to-day sit-
ting at his feet, to catch those wonderful
truths of life and of spirit, that even his dis-
ciples who sat at his feet on those clear Judaean
hillsides so many centuries ago, were unable
at times adequately to grasp.

Although Jesus' revelation was so su-
premely new and vital, that it resulted in prac-
tically a new religion, we must remember
always that he was essentially a Jew, and
183

i84 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

that he lived and died as such, the same as did
all of his disciples. His ancestors for genera-
tions back were Jews, and his was the religion
of Israel.

Before he entered upon his ministry, he be-
came thoroughly acquainted with the old
Hebrew Scriptures. It was undoubtedly the
voices of her prophets that appealed to that
inner consciousness of his, possessed as it was
from the beginning with a wonderful aptitude
for the things of the spirit, and from which
arose the new conception of God and of
man and of their intimate relations in real-
ity, that helped to make his teachings dis-
tinctive and authoritative in the realm of
religion.

He taught occasionally in the synagogue.
He observed the rites of the synagogue, ex-
cept when they came in conflict with his
deeper and truer sense of religion. When they
interfered with the Spirit, he balked. He re-
fused to observe them; he taught the people
not to observe them — for there was something
better — and he scathingly rebuked those who
insisted upon their observance. Paul and his
co-workers and followers later came into con-
flict and apparently into violent conflict with
the Palestinian disciples and Jewish bodies.
The differences in their thought and their
methods gave rise to numerous epistles which

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 185

later found their way into the canon of the
New Testament Scripture. It could be truth-
fully said that a considerable portion of the
New Testament Scripture, outside of the four
Gospels, is but a record of the controversies
or of the conflicting viewpoints of these two
earnest bodies of workers.

It is not at all improbable also that at least
two of the Gospels, that of Matthew, written
near the close of the first century and receiv-
ing its completed form during the opening
years of the second century, and that of John,
which was not written until considerably after
the opening of the second century, bear traces
also of these influences and of conceptions
that were foreign to the thoughts of Jesus'
own disciples, for many of the writings of
Paul were written and were extant for many
years before these two Gospels were written.

The Church of the Disciples was essentially
a Jewish body, but the old dispensation for
them was abrogated when Jesus brought his
tremendous vital spirit of religion, and by vir-
tue of it they passed into the new dispensa-
tion.

And so when we get Jesus' great revelation,
the divinity, the Divine sonship of man, by
virtue of our common parentage — God the
Father — and from it the inevitable brother-
hood, it is well for us to remember that we are

i86 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

still under obligation to that long line of hardy,
virile Hebrew prophets, those men who so
ordered their lives that God could speak to and
through them, could lead them, and thereby
their people. They it was who made the most
valuable portions of our Old Testament Scrip-
ture possible. True, many of them had their
faults ; some of them engaged in practices that
to-day would cause them to be ostracised from
ordinary decent society. If engaged in among
us to-day, our code of morals and our statutes
would compel us to send this one or that one
to jail for a period, or perhaps to the electric
chair, the same as we do others for like of-
fences.

This indicates two things — that they did
the best that they knew — under the old
dispensation. Secondly, that we have grown
immensely in the meantime — under the new
dispensation. But the new was brought about
by a descendant, in reality by one of the old.
He was born in the old, but he in turn so
ordered his life, that he gave birth to the new ;
and to-day as then some of the finest of Chris-
tians are Jews. " But the Jews crucified the
Saviour," I hear it said. A little group cruci-
fied him, a little group so steeped in the dogmas
of ecclesiasticism, of formal religion, that the ,
sole range of their vision and their sole pur-
pose was to preserve the faith once delivered.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 187

They stood for authority. They knew not
the Spirit. But Jesus would have been con-
demned, anathematised, and crucified a hun-
dred times over, by the organisation of his own
Church, had he dared to question, to speak
against, and to teach others the downright sin
of blindly following authority, in distinction
from following that inner light, the prompt-
ings of the Holy Spirit that he realised and
that he sought to make the very centre of
religion. They did this to thousands of his
earnest and true followers, through the vari-
ous centuries for this same reason, and they
would have done it to him. Certainly the
greatest of all religious revolutionists would
not have remained silent when brought face
to face with the abuses that brought so many
of his followers to martyrdom.

Each age is linked in a very definite way
with all the ages that have preceded it. In
this our day when there is a great longing on
the part of all people, and everywhere, for a
closer touch with Reality, and an intense long-
ing to live life more fully from its centre, all
helps that can be appropriated from other lives
and from other times, are not only inspiring,
but concretely helpful. " Every man is a
divinity in disguise," said Emerson. And he
spoke still more concretely when he said : " If
a man have found his centre, the Deity will

i88 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

shine through him, — through all the disguises
of ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of un-
favourable circumstance."

Some of those rugged old Hebrew prophets,
living their simple lives in the midst of their
fields and their flocks, came into such close
touch with reality, that many of their precepts
are of inestimable value to us to-day. And
one of the most valuable things or, rather,
features for us, is that with them, it was so
natural and so simple — there was no element of
mystery about it at all. Common men they
were, some of them very common and even
crude ; but men with a wonderful genius in get-
ting close to reality. All too infrequently do we
recall that day when a simple vine-dresser, by
the name of Amos, left his vineyard and stood
before the king of Israel and spoke without
fear or favour what was pent up in his soul —
" Prophet," said he, " I am no prophet ; only a
plain farmer ; but I come by God's call to tell
you the truth." The full account is a record
of one of the great days in the history of re-
ligion and of liberty.

In the degree that we realise that the very
essence of religion is the consciousness of
God in the soul of man, we will get over the
idea that God has spoken, only. If indeed it
is so it is purely our fault. But it is not so;
and he speaks to-day as always, to all who

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 189

meet the conditions that are established
whereby he can speak.

There is no more reason why he should speak
to a man at work in his vineyard or ploughing
in his fields three thousand years ago, than that
he should speak to and thereby through a man
at work in his vineyard, his orchard, or fol-
lowing his plough in New York state, or in Il-
linois, or in Montana to-day. On the other
hand, there is rather every reason why he
should speak more often and more abundantly
to-day than then. We have advanced infin-
itely beyond those of that day in an under-
standing of the laws and the forces through
which God works. We have had the advan-
tage of their examples ; and still more, we have
had the example as well as the revelation of
the still greater prophet of Nazareth, he who
was of God so uniquely and so supremely that
the great passion and mission of his life be-
came that of revealing God to man and draw-
ing man into more intimate relations with his
Source.

When the old prophet said : " The Lord thy
God in the midst of thee is mighty," we should
have a still clearer realisation of this fact by
virtue of the wonderful revelation that the
Judaean Teacher has made to us. Isaiah came
closer to even modern every-day life than we
are apt to realise when he said: "And the

igo IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit
of counsel and might ; " and Zechariah when
he said : " Not by might, nor by power, but by
my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." And what
a sense and what a feeling of guidance and
protection is embodied in these words — " He
shall give his angels charge over thee to keep
thee in all thy ways, they shall bear thee up in
their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a
stone." No, the voice that spoke to Zech-
ariah and Isaiah, to Moses and to Paul, will
speak to us to-day just as fully as it spoke to
them, if we make it our concern to provide the
conditions whereby it will speak. This we can
declare to all men on the authority of Jesus
the Christ.

X

A FULLER REALISATION AND USE OF

THE ETERNAL POWER WITHIN THAT

BRINGS PEACE AND POWER AND

WISE DIRECTION

The " spirit of wisdom and understanding,"
which was what Jesus meant by his term, the
Holy Spirit, becomes a source of guidance in
all of the affairs of the daily life when we
realise our true relationship to our Source, and
when through desire and through will we come
to live in that attitude of mind and of heart
that makes our connection with this divine
Source adequate. " With thee is the foun-
tain of life; in thy light shall we see light."
" Beloved, now are we the sons of God." " Be-
cause ye are sons, God hath sent forth his
spirit into your hearts." "Thou shalt decree
a thing and it shall be established unto thee."
Does this not sound very much like " the
spirit of counsel and might " of which Isaiah
spoke?

As we get a deeper sense of the spiritual
realities and forces of life, we will realise that
Jesus had a knowledge of forces finer than
191

192 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

those that we ordinarily know, as well as the
laws of their working, when he said : " There-
fore I say unto you, what things soever ye
desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive
them, and ye shall have them." But a knowl-
edge of these finer forces and the laws of their
working become sufficiently understood and
become available for the needs of the daily life,
when we comply with the conditions whereby
they come about.

So far as Jesus discovered the methods he
made them known to us. He spoke whereof
he knew, although from the realm of the un-
seen spiritual forces, when he said : " Seek ye
first the Kingdom of God and all these things
shall be added unto you." With his great apti-
tude — genius, if you please — for the things of
the spirit, he believed in God, believed in God
as spirit, creative spirit, and he identified his
spirit, his real life, with Divine creative spirit.
This to him was God. His conception of God
was the " Heavenly Father." In his own mind
and life it took the form of this close filial
relationship.

His various references, however, make it evi-
dent that in reality it was, that Spirit of In-
finite Life and Power that is back of all, in and
through all, the life of all. In the degree that
we realise this Divine creative spirit as the
source of our life and the source of our

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 193

strength, do we enter into that Kingdom of
God, that Jesus taught is the one all-inclusive
thing. And as we call upon it does it mani-
fest itself in and through us to a continually
increasing degree.

We become partakers ever more fully of the
higher wisdom and the higher powers. Jesus
identified his life so completely with the Fa-
ther's life, that he became the possessor of
insights and powers that were above those
that were possessed or even dreamed of by
those among whom he lived and moved and
worked. My God and your God he taught.
As I am so ye shall be. This Kingdom of
Heaven, this divine rule in the mind and life
comes in response to our earnest seeking
and our earnest desire. If we really desire
it and if through the action of the will we
really choose it — it will lead us in the way of
all good.

In other words it means this — that the re-
ligion of the spirit, the Christianism of the
Christ, links the human with the Divine, man
with his God, and makes him at once son of
man and Son of God, the same as Jesus be-
came and as is his great significance for us.
It makes active in our lives, it calls from the
realm of the potential into the realm of the
actual, powers and forces and leadings that
otherwise we remain ignorant of and there-

194 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

fore without actual possession of, until with
Jesus we realise our essential oneness with
our Source.

I and my Father are one, said he. And we
can never get away from the fact that it was
" my God and your God " that he taught, if
the life and the revelation of Jesus is to be of
the full value to us that he so eagerly longed
that they be. This means the recovery of the
great spiritual elements and forces which have
faded all too fully into the background in con-
nection with the life and the message of
Jesus. It is the recovery by us of those in-
spirations and those forces that have been the
realisation and the possession of all the great
mystics and prophets down through all the
centuries since Jesus' time.

He has shown us the way — the spirit we
must apply ourselves. It is not what Jesus
would do in this or that circumstance. It is
how the Spirit of Wisdom that he brought us
knowledge of, and into such potential vital rela-
tions with, directs us, each as an individual, as
it always will if we trust our lives fully to its
leadings. It is the spirit of power — Divine
power, if you please — that will manifest itself
through us as it did through Jesus in the de-
gree that we make our minds and thereby
our lives a channel through which it can
work — in the degree that we take our pedi-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 195

gree from God as Jesus taught, and not from
" Adam."

In the degree that we follow that first great
injunction that the Master enjoined, that of
love to God, so fully, that our one desire is
that the rule of God becomes supreme in our
minds and hearts and lives, in that degree will
the light of Heaven begin to illumine the soul ;
in that degree does the Holy Spirit awaken
within us a sense of the life eternal, that makes
many of the problems, and the whole round of
petty annoyances in the daily life, dwindle in
their proportions, compared to those they have
heretofore assumed. There comes as never be-
fore a distinct and a profound realisation that
underneath are the Everlasting Arms. Faith
becomes ever more dominant, and we have
a profound conviction that whatever the
occurrence may be at any point along life's
highway, that out of it all, good, and only
good, will come. The central truth of Bur-
roughs' splendid stanza becomes a reality
to us:

" I stay my haste, I make delays.
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid eternal ways.
And what is mine shall know my face."

The good Quaker poet, Whittier, also
touched reality when he said:

196 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

" I have no answer for myself or thee.
Save that I learned beside my mother's knee ;
All is of God that is or is to be.
And God is Good."

If Jesus taught anything clearly, it was that
in the realm of the inner spiritual forces are
the real issues of life ; that as we live life from
its centre, these forces become active and
usable.

Even in connection with what we call our
material lives, we are getting continually
more and more on the track of the finer
forces, and are discovering the laws of their
working. We do not know in all cases ex-
actly how they work, but we know that they
do work. Because we do not always un-
derstand them, we do not speak of them as
mere sentimental things. But we say — it is
the way God works in the universe about
us.

If we are true to what we know to-day and
push on, we will know more about them to-
morrow. Edison knows a great deal about
electricity. Just what it is and exactly how
it works in every case, he does not know —
at least he didn't know — last week. He does,
however, know that as a force and under given
conditions, it does work; and the wonderful
applications that he has made of it as a force

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 197

are familiar in many different forms, to mil-
lions of people throughout the world to-day.
And so in regard to the spiritual laws and
forces in life. We are getting rapidly beyond
the point where merely because we do not
know how they may work we regard them in
the light of mere sentimental things. We say
rather — it is the way God works in human
lives.

The ablest and keenest thinkers among us,
and men of the highest types of lives, are real-
ising that we do not avail ourselves of these
helps in the daily life to anywhere near the
extent that it is good and wise that we do.
Our own William James, France's Henri Berg-
son, Germany's Rudolf Eucken, Britain's Sir
Oliver Lodge, are but examples of men of
keen, penetrating minds who have caught
greater glimpses of reality, who have followed
their lead, and who have sent forth the call to
other men to look more diligently along these
same lines.

Every one of them agrees with the great
prophet of Nazareth, that man does not live
by bread alone, but by every word that pro-
ceedeth out of the mouth of God. And with his
teaching — ^that the voice of God is continually
and eternally within, they all agree. It is
through the independent thought and ventures
of such men that we are learning more and

198 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

more of the finer forces in life. Said one of
them not so long ago : " The Boundary between
the known and the unknown is wearing thin
in places."

In our material activities we are abandoning
the heavier, cruder forms of power, and we
are using in their stead the finer forces that we
are gradually attaining an ever greater knowl-
edge of. The ox is replaced by electrical
power, we conduct through a single piece of
wire energy that will do in an hour what a
hundred oxen could not do in a week.

In our mental and spiritual lives we make
life and its problems far more complex than
we need to, if we will but avail ourselves of
the use of the forces, and put ourselves under
the guidance of the leadings, that the great
spiritual genius and prophet of Nazareth,
through his wonderful aptitude for things of
the spirit and of God, perceived and lived and
taught.

The following utterance by Archdeacon Wil-
berforce in a sermon preached in St. John's,
Westminster, shows how big men in our
churches are taking things that really count
in connection with life to their people : " The
secret of optimism is the mental effort to abide
in conscious oneness with the Supreme Power,
the Infinite Immanent Mind evolving a per-
fect purpose. When you are thus mentally

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 199

abiding in the ' secret place of the Most High,'
you live above all ' happenings,' whatever may
be their soul-harrowing cost. Moreover, this
attitude benefits the community, for it makes a
thought-atmosphere. It is beginning to be
recognised as a fact in mental science that
thoughts do produce vibrations, helpful or
harmful. When many are thinking from the
basis of conscious oneness with the Infinite
Mind, their combined thoughts have a direct
influence in shaping conditions and events.
This is called by some ' mass-suggestion,' by
others the ' psychology of crowds ' ; we call it
the prayer of faith. I cannot define its opera-
tion, but it is certain that the machinery of
events does move in the direction of strong and
combined human thinking."

And the following from a still more recent
utterance will be welcomed by all forward-
looking men, both laymen and ministers : " Our
slow-moving minds may be long in recognising
it, and our unspiritual lives may seem to contra-
dict it ; but deep in the centre of the being of
every man there is a divine self to be awakened,
a ray of God's life which Paul calls ' the Christ
in you.' Jesus is the embodiment of the univer-
sal principle of the immanence of God in man.
He is the symbol, the sacrament, the outward
and visible sign of the divine nature immanent
in the race; and in that aspect his appeal to

200 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

humanity is: 'As I am, so are ye in this
world; I am divine spirit in perfection, ye are
divine spirit in germ. Infinite Mind is " greater
than all." " The Father is greater than I," in
the sense that the Infinite must necessarily be
greater than even its highest possible mani-
festation, just as diffused electricity is greater
than the lightning flash that manifests it ; but
in youi' rudimentary mental condition you can-
not know either yourselves, or the Infinite
Father Spirit fully, influentially, except
through his self-manifestation in me, and my
identification with you.' Thus is Jesus the
' Mediator,' or uniting medium between God
and man. . . . The principle of what is called
Christianity is the immanence of our Father-
God in humanity ; the fact that individual men
are separate items in a vast solidarity in which
Infinite Mind is expressing himself. Jesus has
shown us what the ideal is to which that prin-
ciple will lead. . . .

" Remember God must win us. We are
his vehicles. He cannot lose us. He must
overcome creaturely defect and obstinacy. He
must reign till he hath put all enemies under
his feet. Divine love is the spirit of evolution
effecting the moral perfection of man. To re-
sist divine love is like resisting the law of
gravitation; the resistance may seem success-
ful for a time, but the law wins in the end.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 201

The mystic Christ will win us here or here-
after. To find him within us now, to let him
conquer us now, to recognise him as Em-
manuel God with us, God for us, God in us,
is the secret and soul of spiritual progress. To
pass through the painful puzzle of this life's
education calmly certain that, in all circum-
stances and conditions, an omnipotent all-wise
Friend is ever desiring to rule our life, this it
it is to be vitalised, empowered, elevated."

XI

A STATEMENT OF JESUS' CHRISTIANISM

IN TERMS OF PRESENT-DAY LIFE

AND PROBLEMS

As we are rapidly getting away from the
ambulance stage in our conceptions of Chris-
tianity, so we are getting away, and some of
our churches to a notable degree, from a " con-
templative selfishness which makes our entire
religious life hardly more than a monologue."
We have already said that both in our churches
and out of our churches, great numbers of
men and women of independent thought and
of high purpose, are endeavouring to get at the
essence of Jesus' own life and teachings ; they
have become dissatisfied with both doctrine
and form, and are going back to an examina-
tion of early beginnings.

In this they are making a twofold study —
Jesus' own life, activities, and teachings; and
secondly, the basis upon which the Church as
an organisation was built. They are studying
the early creeds and their later amplifications,
and the methods of their formation. They are
studying into the various dogmas that later re-

202

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 203

ceived official sanction, and that thereby gradu-
ally became the established Church doctrine.
They are impressed with the fact that some-
how they and Jesus dealt with entirely dif-
ferent matters ; they moved, so to speak, in an
entirely different orbit. And as they become
acquainted with many of the mythical tradi-
tions upon which the organisation was built
and through which authority was gained, they
find that as the early Church of the Disciples,
simple but with a wonderful spirit, was made
to give way to the highly complex Roman or-
ganisation, authority, orthodoxy became the
watchword, and the essential thing was to sup-
port the validity of the early theories which
grew into set forms of doctrine about Jesus.
These assumed in time the ascendency, so
that the really characteristic features of Jesus'
own life and teachings were pushed almost
completely into the background. They are
finding that on account of his active life of
service being pushed so completely into the
background, and his death being made later
the chief thing, there has come down to us a
portrait of him, fashioned by both pen and by
statue, that they are convinced is a mere
travesty of the virile, active, stirring personal-
ity that he was. Through this direct study of
his active life and ministry, they are construct-
ing a new image, a new ideal of him.

204 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

They are concluding also that to be a Chris-
tian, one must think and act as Jesus thought
and acted. They are finding that the dominat-
ing thought of Jesus' life took a twofold form,
that God was his father and that man was his
brother, and that also he must, by every means
available, bring all men into this twofold real-
isation and relationship. It was with him not
only a belief in God — I believe in God the Fa-
ther Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth — it
was a belief that God was his father and that he
must come into an intimate personal relation-
ship with him. It was also his belief that God
was equally the Father of all other men, and
that every other man was therefore his brother.

So the thinking man of to-day, realising that
when Jesus summarised the essence of religion
in his reply to the lawyer as love for God, and
love for the neighbour, it means that to be a
follower of the Christ, therefore a Christian,
one must come into these same intimate per-
sonal relations with God in all the phases of
his inner life so fully, that he has no desire
other than to do the will of God as through
this relationship it will be made manifest to
him; and that he shall recognise every other
man as his brother and shall love him as
such, — and growing out of this and an integral
part of it, that he can show his love for his
God only as he shows his love for his neigh-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 205

hour, and that the only way he can serve God
is through service to his neighbour.

And so he is realising that whatever in the
historic faith of the Church centres around
these essentials of Jesus is of value, that all
other things are inconsequential and may be
even detrimental. If therefore a man's belief
and life are based upon these essentials of
Jesus, he may believe the entire Christian
dogma as built up by the Church. If they are
not so based, he can believe them all, and be in
no sense a Christian.

So, virile, high-purposed men are everywhere
being gripped with the truth that Jesus taught
no system, but that he taught a great spirit
so to speak, a great motive in life, and that
love is the word that encompasses it all. They
are realising that Jesus taught that there is no
such thing as a direct personal, or institutional
salvation, that personal salvation comes always
indirectly — it comes through service to others.
Love is the propelling motive and love means
action. They remember that Jesus called him-
self Truth not Habit. And the truth he realised
he laboured diligently to lead all others into.

So we realise again that the religion and
therefore the life that Jesus taught was both
Godward and manward — ^Love God, love
man ; serve God by serving man. Love God —
love the neighbour. Live in constant intimate

2o6 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

relations with God — live in constant friendly
and helpful relations with the neighbour.

It was Tolstoy who said : " The trouble with
this age of ours is that it has lost its sense of
God." It was Jesus who, in the parable of the
Good Samaritan, in terms that can never be
misunderstood answered — Who is my neigh-
bour? It does us good at times to recall the
thought so uniquely expressed by Ernest
Crosby:

" No one could tell me where my soul might be.
I searched for God but God eluded me.
I sought my brother out and found all three."

And this significant verse by Edwin Mark-
ham embodies a truth not unlike it:

" Who puts back into place a fallen bar.
Or flings a rock out of a travelled road.
His feet are moving toward the central star,
His name is whispered in the Gods' abode."

If there is one word that could be chosen as
an epitome of Jesus' teachings it would be the
word love. Even at the very close of his min-
istry he said to his disciples, " A new command-
ment I give unto you, that ye love one another."
And I suspect that when we know a little
more than we know at the present time, when
we are really ready to take Jesus' teachings

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 207

as he gave them to us, we will find that most
of these complex problems before us will be
solved through the media of this one word,
love. Take our social problems ; take our prob-
lem of employer and labourer ; take our world
military problem — the disgrace, we might say,
of this supposedly civilized age ; infuse into all
our relations this real element of love and sym-
pathy, and see how these problems will begin
to solve themselves.

I suspect also that we will not have any
solution of these and kindred problems in our
generation, or the next generation, or still the
next, and so on indefinitely, until we do finally
have sense enough really to take this great
fundamental of Jesus and build our own lives
upon it, and infuse this great force, or this prin-
ciple, into all of our personal and community
relations, into all our national and international
relations.

Were we realising this more fully, we
wouldn't be witnessing to-day a return to the
jungle methods, to the use of tooth and claw.
The cave men broke in the skulls one of an-
other because they didn't know there was a
better way of living with neighbouring tribes.
Savage tribes among us to-day occasionally do
the same. Now and then a Christian nation
has to send an expeditionary force to s^ve them
from their blind fury.

2o8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

We have been witnessing the blinding hate,
the fury, and the struggles of millions of men
as they endeavour to break in one another's
skulls, among the leading Christian nations of
the world. Does any sane person pretend for a
moment to say or to think, that if the Church
had been true to the teachings of her Master,
this would have been occurring to-day! No,
she hasn't dared to be true to her Master. She
has strayed after false Gods. She has fol-
lowed the lead of early creed-makers and of
ecclesiastics, instead of daring to do her own
thinking, instead of daring to follow the teach-
ings of the Master.

She has been first beguiled, and then bullied
into the belief that the organisation is the
thing, when the Master wouldn't give the snap
of his finger for all the religious organisations
in the world, compared to the realisation and
the exemplication of; By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one
another ; compared to : Thy Kingdom come, thy
will be done in earth as it is in heaven ; com-
pared to : And the second is like unto it, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

But failing to grasp these, failing to realise
the wonderful conservation that comes through
the law of mutuality, nations have been piling
up national debts, under which their people will
stagger as the tax edict sounds out its eternal

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 309

Pay, Pay, Pay, for upwards of two hundred
years to come. They have been laying waste
and have been destroying untold millions of the
results of men's and women's labour. They
have endeavoured to kill, and they have suc-
ceeded in killing, the very flower of the young
manhood of opposing nations; and in en-
deavouring to do this, they have had the very
flower of their own young manhood killed
off.

Desolation is brought to millions of homes ;
and millions of mothers stand in their stolid
grief, realising that they have borne their sons
— no, I will not hesitate to say it, for it is all
too true — as " cannon fodder " — in the wild
frenzy of organised murder that has not been of
their own choosing, and in connection with
which they have had no voice. And over, what
has been gained? Nothing, not a solitary thing
that could not have been gained through the
application of ordinary horse-sense on the part
of men meeting one another on the ground of
mutual consideration and mutual respect. And
through it all we realise the truth that revealed
itself to the poet's vision:

" The robber is robbed by his riches ;
The tyrant is dragged by his chains ;
The schemer is snared by his cunning.
The slayer lies dead by the slain,"

210 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

Men and whole nations have been hypnotised
into the belief that they can gain more through
the destructive law of conflict than through the
conserving law of mutuality. They have been
hypnotised into the belief that they must arm
one against another, that nations must build
long lines of forts along their frontiers to pro-
tect themselves against the aggressions of their
neighbours. It is a mediaeval idea, and strange
to say, with all our enlightenment and advance-
ment, it still persists in this twentieth century.

But it is false, false in that it is not neces-
sarily so. There is a boundary-line over three
thousand miles in extent, between the United
States and Canada. Through the application
of plain common sense, and through it the con-
serving of hundreds of millions of dollars, it
has not been necessary through a hundred
years to build a single fort or to plant a single
cannon, along this vast boundary-line. Sus-
picion and mistrust have not been planted or
engendered thereby.

True there are differences in peoples and in
nations ; but strong men, men of heart as well
as of brains, respect differences, and even ad-
mire them. These do not lead to antagonism,
unless in our blind stupidity or bigotry we
allow them so to lead. Kipling, in that splendid
poem regarding the East and the West, recog-
nises this difference:

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 211

" Oh, East is East, and West is West,
And never the Twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently
At God's great Judgment Seat ; "

He recognises at the same time, however, a
law just as deep-seated and even more far-
reaching :

" But there is neither East nor West,
Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
Tho' they come from the ends of the earth ! "

And why has this great and destructive
struggle come about? thoughtful men are ask-
ing everywhere. There are undoubtedly many
contributory causes, but primarily the reasons
are these : On account of inflated ambitions ; on
account of a lack of intelligent attention to
their own affairs in government on the part
of the people of the various nations; and on
account of the failure of Christianity in that
we have professed but have not lived the teach-
ings of the. Christ. I am sure we will find
that these will bear analysis.

Hymns of hate and deeds of hate are the
direct antithesis of the Christianism of the
Christ. A lack of imagination, of clear think-
ing, and of high purpose on the part of us all

212 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

cannot be overlooked. A well-known minister
— citizen of one of the nations in the war, in a
large public gathering, said in substance some
days ago, that the Church upon whom the guilt
of the world rested, because it could have saved
the world and did not, must prove that she
does not think that her Master's principles are
unpractical and dull, but are living and to be
lived for. It is not for me to say how true the
first position of this statement may be; there
can be no question on the part of thinking men
and women as to the truth of the latter part of
his statement.

It is also probably true that the gigantic
struggle over, with its enormous losses, and
with its enormous debts encumbering the peo-
ple for centuries to come, the people of the
various nations will be so brought to their
senses, as well as to a realisation of their rights
and their duties, that it will be forever impos-
sible for a group of twenty-two men to plunge
the world into a period of such destructive sav-
agery again. When all is over, and the ruin
and the losses are contemplated, men will think
as they have never thought before. The final
judgment of men, even in those nations
whose rulers have been most to blame, will
be pretty nearly correct. They will place
the blame where it belongs. It remains to
be seen what portion of the blame they

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 213

will recognise themselves as responsible
for.

A noted scientist and writer has recently
said, " The most atrocious lie that was ever
spoken by human lips, is concentrated into only
five words : ' the divine right of kings,' with
one exception in atrocity, ' the divine right of
priests.' " Yes, and both of them are opposed
to the teachings of the Christ. All too slowly
they have been dying because the rank and file
of men act through habit and inheritance, in-
stead of through intelligent independent think-
ing. Nevertheless men are thinking, and from
now on will be thinking more clearly and more
concretely than ever before. And the more
clearly they realise that the boldest advocates
of the former are interested primarily in hold-
ing their authority and in perpetuating their
line, and that the latter are interested primarily
in clinging to their authority even in an age
where they realise all too clearly that it has all
but slipped from them, then the people will act
in a manner that shows a greater degree of self-
enlightenment — ^kindly but resolutely.

I would not minimise the heroism and the
self-sacrifice of the millions of young men who
with the most commendable feelings and
promptings of patriotism have thrown them-
selves into the vortex. One thing, however,
that will come home to all, is that the losses are

214 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

incalculable and atrocious because so unneces-
sary. But what are we, what is the world to
gain from it? What is to be done? And this
means what are we going to do to prevent our
going on year after year and generation after
generation, under the leadership of those who
believe in the brute force of the savage, and
that might makes right, rather than under the
leadership of those who believe in the use of
ordinary common sense, who believe in the
spirit of mutual consideration and concession,
in the relations of nations one with another.

The only thing that will make war to cease
is the extension of the principle of brotherhood
into the relations and the dealings of nations
one with another, and the spirit of the Christ
whereby every nation will be as eager to give
justice as it is to demand justice.

All the peoples of the world are so intimately
and so mutually related now, through travel,
through commerce, and through many common
interests, that co-operation through federation
is now natural and imperative. A permanent
World's Court, composed of representatives of
every nation, upon some just and equitable
principle of representation, must t£ike form.
To it all disputes between nations that cannot
be settled among themselves, must be referred
for final adjudication. The Allied Army of the
Powers, which would mean but a fraction of

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 215

those now in existence, must be the police
power that will enforce these decisions if there
is shown a disposition on the part of any na-
tion not to abide by them.

Then if one nation contracts too fully the
inflated ego ; if it makes unjust demands upon
any smaller or weaker nation or seeks any un-
fair advantage, or advantage through any un-
fair methods in its dealings with any other
nation or nations ; or if it shows a chronic dis-
position to " run amuck " among nations, it can
be dealt with in an orderly, a convincing, and
an economical manner.

One nation or one group of nations will not
have to be thrown then into the incalculable
losses of war for self-protection, nor will the
peace of the world whereby all nations suffer,
be again disrupted. The world is so closely re-
lated now that the rights of neutral nations in
times of international conflict are becoming
matters of supreme importance.

We men of America on account of the unique
position the nation occupies — not that our
record is clear by any means, far from it — but
it is unquestionably more clear than that of
any other nation of anywhere near like impor-
tance in the world, should take a leading hand
in bringing about the establishing of this In-
ternational Court that is sure to come. The
world is not only ready but pleading for it, and

2i6 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the best minds and thought of every nation
recognise the fact that it is now due.

America, by reason of her far security, has
been in the position to develop unhindered, free
from the biases and the centuries-old preju-
dices and suspicions and hatreds that have been
the cause of so many discords, that have been
the cause of so many antagonisms in many of
the old-world countries. She looks with faith
and trust and supreme good-will upon every
nation. More than this, a new Nationalism has
of late years been taking form here, which is
gradually convincing the nations of the world
that there is such a thing as a nation being
genuinely interested in developing the re-
sources and in helping to promote the highest
welfare of other smaller and weaker nations.
This is said not in a " holier than thou " fashion,
but because it is a fact.

Nor have we been beguiled by the belief that
still holds in some quarters, that militarism is
conducive to the strength, the real safety, or
prosperity of a nation. The almost incom-
prehensible losses, the unending horizons of
blackened ruins of things that once were, the
delusion of militarism and the belief that great
armies help nations to prosperity, will now be
subject to modification if not to radical
change.

All intelligent people now recognise the fact

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 217

that ententes, alliances, and coalitions of every
type, have proved themselves incapable of pre-
serving peace. It is almost needless to say that
they always will, because they are based upon
mistrust and eventually upon militarism. The
very basis of militarism is a disbelief in
mutuality and co-operation, whose logical
sequence is Federation. The Founder of Chris-
tendom taught love — it was his fundamental
teaching — and from love arises neighbourliness,
mutuality, co-operation; and for any nation,
therefore, to base its whole structure upon mili-
tarism and call itself a Christian nation is in-
deed an anomaly.

It is now armed rivalry and suspicion on the
one hand, or unarmed co-operation through
the mighty conserving law of mutuality, on the
other. Nations must now co-operate and fed-
erate or they must perish. He that takes the
sword shall perish by the sword, is based upon
an elemental law. It is as true of nations as
it is of individuals.

With the blasting of their hopes of peace and
of security through militarism, European na-
tions — if not their rulers then their peoples —
are now more ready to consider and to demand
other means for peace and safety. Alliances
through secret diplomacy, are likewise not to
be depended upon, when it comes to the final
test. It is also time to learn a great and now a

2i8 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

clearly demonstrated lesson from the past —
that annexation of conquered territory or peo-
ples without their consent, or expressed desire,
can never be made successfully, that is, it can
never be made to pay. No violation of ele-
mental laws and no sins against human nature
can ever be made to pay. They will in time
be avenged. Chickens do come home to
roost.

If some form of World Federation does not
now speedily come about, then these millions
of brave young men of all the involved nations,
who have thrown themselves with such heroic
abandon into the great conflict, will have died
in vain, and the historian will have no choice
but to record this period as the period of the
Great Crime. We owe it to them, as well as to
ourselves and to our children, to work un-
ceasingly and with a dauntless determination
for the extension of nationalism into interna-
tionalism, whereby a definite World Federa-
tion will begin speedily to take form. It waits
for those nations of the clearest insight and
the greatest moral courage to begin. Others
will gradually and necessarily be drawn
into it.

It requires no secret diplomacy, but honest,
open, straightforward dealings as do all mat-
ters where the real welfare of the people is the
primary object. Here is an accomplishment

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 219

worthy of the highest ability in statesmanship
and diplomacy, as well as the highest ability in
informing and in moulding public opinion
throughout the nations. We will yet reach the
period when it will be asked of nations simi-
larly as of individuals — What profiteth it if a
nation gain the whole world and lose its own
soul?

Christian nations must give life to their
Christianity. The Christ did not formulate
doctrine ; he revealed truth, and he showed us
the Way in life that leads to peace and good-
will among men. And the truth that he taught
— that we shall love our neighbours as our-
selves, is just as essential for us to realise as
that we shall love our God. It is only by such
methods that the Kingdom of Heaven and its
rule among men, can be made actual in this
our world. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be
done in earth, as it is in heaven, is our prayer.
We forget that in human affairs God works
entirely through human agencies — through hu-
man minds and hearts and wills. Millions
of men and women pray this daily. When
these millions of men and women realise
that upon them devolves the duty, then
we will more speedily begin to realise the
Kingdom.

A mighty lot of thinking has been going on
during the last decade, and a mighty lot of

220 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

thinking is going on to-day. The result is that
Christianity is in a great transitional stage
to-day. The vast numbers of earnest, thinking
men and women among us, now freed from
" authority," who are finding authority for
themselves and are finding it in a direct study
of Jesus' own life and teachings, are receiving
from them such inspirations that they are com-
ing into close grip with many of the agencies
that have retarded the coming of the Kingdom
here among men.

Take men of exceptional executive ability,
of exceptional business ability, of exceptional
mental acumen, inspire them, or rather let
them be inspired and gripped by Jesus' two-
fold message of love, which means the divinity
of man and the rule of brotherhood among men,
and wonderful changes will be soon in our
midst. With the dying of great portions of
the old beliefs, and with the time ripe for a
great new onsweep of the Spirit, what cannot
a few such men do along the lines of a revital-
ised Christianity, which means a revitalised
Church, and a revitalised nation!

Let then a sufficient number of men in sev-
eral of the leading nations be inspired suffi-
ciently with the newly dawning thought, that
a narrow scheming self-seeking and therefore
unchristian nationalism must give way to inter-
nationalism, with its law of mutualism and its

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 221

cardinal principle of being as eager to give
justice as to demand justice, and the slowly
dawning World Federation becomes a thing of
to-morrow. This is what we are beginning to
witness on every hand to-day.

Strong and virile men in all ranks of life are
catching the real spirit of the teachings of the
Christ, they are being gripped by its beauty
and its power, and they are asking: Lord,
what wilt thou have me to do?

Said a well-known business man to a well-
known churchman, by whose side he was sit-
ting on a platform at a notable gathering some
time ago: Bishop, I take it that you too are
more interested in men than in things. This
same Henry Ford, in the prime of life, obedient
to the spirit within, proceeds to Christianise a
great business. Other men take note and fol-
low his example. Other men of great business
abilities independently do the same. They
thereby move out of the ranks of the common-
place, into the ranks of the elect. This more
inclusive life expands in its beauty and its
power to a degree that they had not dreamed
before.

It is but another step to use the exceptional
executive and business abilities in the service of
one's community, his city, the state, or the na-
tion through the avenues of political action or
otherwise, instead of using them entirely for

222 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

the piling up of great fortunes, which beyond a
certain point may be of questionable value to
one's descendants, and sometimes a positive
harm.

Men and women of exceptional wealth are
being moved by and are being gripped by this
same spirit — already a great change has come.
Never again in our day, can it be said that the
wealthy are intent primarily upon their own
aggrandisement and pleasures, that they are
careless of the welfare of others. The recent
response to the world's needs both in money
and in personal service, is of itself a denial of
that. They too are moving out into the ranks
of the elect, with lives that are expanding in
beauty through the joy of action in service.
True there are some who are still dead, who
show by their lives and their habits that they
are but little above the brute creation — ^but
they are exceptions.

Increasing numbers of University men are
grasping this simpler but this truer content of
the Christian religion, and with their trained
minds and with their broader knowledge of
things and of events, they are making their ac-
tivities more keenly felt in various realms of
human action, including that essential field
in good government — the field of practical
politics.

Labour and Capital, employer and employee.

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 223

are recognising as never before the power of
this law of mutuality in their agreements, in
adjusting their differences, and in all their re-
lations. The " working agreement," and the
deep-seated realisation of the fact that the in-
terests of the one are the interests of the other,
are leading them awdy from the days of con-
tinual conflict and brow-beating, with their
enormous losses both to themselves and to the
public, into a far more common-sense and con-
serving type of relationship.

Men who are awake to the real message and
therefore the real religion of the Christ, are
being drawn into closer touch and work with
our prisons. The old idea of revenge and of
punishment, is giving way to the idea of uplift
and reformation through education, so that
when a man has served his time, he is returned
to society not as an outlaw, as the great bulk
of men have been ; but he is returned a changed
and a wiser man, with the ability and with the
disposition still to do a man's work in the
world. Under this better and wiser influence,
instead of being treated as brutes, solely to be
caged and curbed, they are being treated as
human beings, men with souls, men with the
divine spark, ready to come forth under the
influence of the right environment and under
the influence of the Spirit of the Christ as it
becomes incarnate and manifests itself in those

224 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

under whose influence and whose direction
they are.

A continually clearer realisation of the fact
is taking place on the part of long-headed men
and women, that we are to blame, that society
is to blame in the great majority of cases, for
the passing of men and women within prison
walls. It was Victor Hugo who said that bad
conditions make bad men; therefore let us
change the conditions.

A few days ago when at Sing Sing Prison, I
was being shown about by a trusty who is serv-
ing a life sentence. He is between twenty-five
and thirty years of age. Whiskey, he said, was
the cause of his crime and the cause of his
sentence. While under the influence of drink, a
quarrel with his companion ensued and he
pulled a gun and shot him.

I inquired of his family. He has a mother
and a sister living. His sister is widowed and
has a family of children. They live together.
The mother and daughter take in washing and
go out to do cleaning. He is paid two cents
a day for his labour, the same as are all the
other inmates in the prison. Under a saner
type of management, our stupid folly of send-
ing a man to prison, and of allowing his family,
if he has a family, to struggle along without
any means of support, or if unable to meet suc-
cessfully the changed conditions, making them

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 225

become public charges, will be done away with.
Every man in prison will be paid a decent wage
for his labour, to be returned to his family — in
practically every case the greatest sufferers.

It happened to be an afternoon when the
Prisoners' Court was in session — the court
composed entirely of inmates — under the direc-
tion of the Welfare League that has been in-
stituted under the regime of Warden Osborne
and that has had such a wonderful influence
upon the prison discipline and life. Among
those who were before the court for infraction
of prison rules, was one of the few older men
in the prison. During his statement he said
that he had been tried and sentenced for a
crime that he had committed, of which he had
no knowledge, absolutely no memory of what-
ever.

I cite these two cases for a purpose. As
a people, and as a government, we license,
we allow to be manufactured and to be
sold, deadly crime-inciting, poverty-producing
drinks that serve no good purposes whatever,
but that sow the seeds of moral, mental, and
physical deterioration, the seeds of poverty and
of crime throughout the land. The national
government and the local community derive a
profit out of the business. Courts of justice
taking care of the criminals that are made, the
continual grist of defectives and paupers to be

226 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

cared for, more than balance in the end the
sums that are derived in profits, to say noth-
ing of tJw desolation that is brought to hun-
dreds of thousands of homes annually, the
never-ending lines of men that are sent to our
jails and penitentiaries, and the other numbers
that thp state puts to death, for crimes com-
mitted under the influence of that which we
permit and legalise.

Is it any wonder that as a Christian people
we are awakening from our lethargy, and are
demanding that the crime and poverty produc-
ing stuff which serves no good purpose what-
ever, be driven from the country? I am saying
nothing of those light healthy wines and beers,
manufactured under strict regulations as to
purity, such as are used by all classes of people
in France, in Germany, in Italy and in other
countries, in their homes and on their tables.
I am speaking of the deadly whiskies and al-
cohols, and of the legalising of public drinking-
places by the thousands where these can be
bought and drunk — the saloons that become
the meeting-places of gamblers and crooks and
political grafters, and bf those who make it a
business by every conceivable method to lure
young men and women away from the paths
of straight and decent living.

If we profess to be a Christian civilisation,
two minutes of clear thinking will show any

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 327

man that this practice that we permit and
legalise is the very antithesis of Christian life
and practice. We will realise that upon us
rest the crimes that are committed and the
poverty and degradation that is brought an-
nually to hundreds of thousands of homes —
"our neighbours," and we will speak with a
voice of determination to our government both
national and local.

In so doing, however, we will be speaking
to ourselves, for we can never get away from
the fact that in a democratic form of govern-
ment, we, so to speak, are the government, that
is, upon the individual citizen as a voter and
as one whose duty it is to take a direct personal
interest and activity in all public matters, de-
pends every policy and every act of govern-
ment. When we are awake to our duties as
well as our privileges as citizens, we will
realise the fact that whenever we have any
conditions or any state of affairs in govern-
ment, national, state, or local, that are not what
they should be, it is because the average citizen,
you and I, do not give the intelligent considera-
tion, the time, and the attention to matters of
government, to practical politics, that we
should give them.

And so in our present-day life, as men grasp
the real content of the Master's teachings, they
are gripped with a greater intelligence and pur-

228 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

pose that pushes them along lines of action
that those without this deeper perception and
realisation do not have. A genuine love for the
neighbour, a deeper realisation that service is
the evidence of that love, a wider extension
of the law of mutuality, combine to give evi-
dence of the fact that the Christianity of the
Christ is actually alive and is being lived here
among men.

XII

THE POWER, THE BEAUTY, AND THE SUS-
TAINING PEACE THAT THE NEW
MEANING OF CHRISTIANITY IM-
PARTS TO LIFE

The historian of the future will probably
point to our time as a time when there came
a great change in Christianity. For then men
became keen enough to realise that formulated
Christianity was something different from the
revelation and the teachings of the Christ.
Then men began to stop discussing and also
discoursing upon the Divinity of Jesus, and
realised that the supreme thing that Jesus
taught was the Divinity of man. If the divin-
ity of man, then, not the fall of man and
his inherent sinfulness and degradation, and
thereby one of the chief foundation pillars
of ecclesiasticism dropped and crumbled,
and with it came a vitality and a power that
made it take a great leap forward, taking with
it great numbers of earnest, thinking men and
women who were rapidly becoming alienated,
and drawing to it vast numbers who had never
been impressed or interested.
229

230 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

It was a time, they will say, when men began
fully to realise that religion is not something,
as a glove, to put on on Sundays and on spe-
cial occasions, but that it is an inner spirit that
permeates the innermost springs of life, and
that becomes a guiding and a moulding force
in connection with the minutest affairs of the
daily life, and in every relation of a man with
his neighbour.

The time has passed when one need apolo-
gise for comparing organised Christianity as it
is to-day with the real teachings, and .spirit,
and life of the Christ, or in pointing to its weak-
nesses or its failures. Not only outsiders, but
its most genuine adherents realise these all
too keenly. This is one of the reasons that it
has lost its hold — both Protestant and Catho-
lic — upon the great masses of its people. An-
other reason is that truth has a persistent way
of obtruding itself, and of pushing facts up to
the surface. A knowledge of early beginnings
in connection with dogmatic and ecclesiastical
Christianity, is relieving increasing numbers
from the superstitious reverence for it as an
organisation that many once had.

The real content of Christianity, if it had
gone out to the world as Jesus gave it so sim-
ply and so clearly on those clear Judaean hills,
would have been a force that before this would
have swept the world. There is nothing more

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 231

needed at the present time, than the rekindling
of a deep spiritual consciousness, based upon
the real content of Jesus' teachings, in the in-
dividual mind and life, so that it may per-
meate and determine all conditions in our col-
lective life and in society as a whole. The
real spiritual elements that have so fully faded
into the background in Christianity must be
recovered, for they constitute its very life.

Christianity must be a growing thing. It
must abide by the same law of God that is
eternal and that can never be evaded — it must
develop and grow, or it must stagnate and
perish.

" It is the hour of man : New purposes,
Broad-shouldered, press against the world's

slow gate ;
And voices from the vast eternities
Still preach the soul's austere apostolate.

" Always there will be vision for the heart.
The press of endless passion ; every goal
A traveller's tavern, whence he must depart
On new divine adventures of the soul."

We hear men talk already of the formulating
of a new Religion. In a sense they are right.
But they must realise that the human mind
knows nothing yet that is superior to the funda-

232 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

mentals of the Christ ; and that any new formu-
lation of religion, and for probably a long time
to come, must centre upon these fundamentals.

The real content of Christianity is to my
mind superior to any other form of religion
that we know. But some forms of ecclesias-
tical Christianity are not only no better but
in many respects inferior. The sole test of
any religion is in its influences, its effects upon
the lives, the characters, and therefore the acts
and the practices of those who are its fol-
lowers. There are forms of Christianity that
do not measure up well by this test. We must
not be too sanguine nor too cock-sure regard-
ing the superiority or even the permanency of
Christianity.

The greater our study of Comparative Re-
ligions, the more our eyes are opened to the
valuable contents of some other religions.
Moreover as we gain a wider acquaintanceship
with some of their adherents, the more we are
impressed with the splendid lives and char-
acters that have been developed and shaped by
them.

It is, we must conclude, only as Christianity
is lived that gives it its real superiority. And
this is the real significance of this great recon-
struction process that is on in Christendom to-
day. Men are getting their religion through
their own interpretations by a direct contact

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 233

with the Master and by a direct study of his
matchless teachings. The more they are doing
this, the more profoundly dissatisfied are they
with dogmatic Christianity and with its
methods.

The more however they sit at his feet, the
more they are inspired and the more they are
determined to make his way their way. They
get the vision; they go forth to its call. And
so Christianity is functioning in an increasing
degree through the minds and the hearts and
therefore the lives of men and women who are
doing a valiant work in making the Kingdom
of heaven the kingdom of this earth.

It is the most hopeful sign of an awakened
Christianity and an advancing Christian civili-
sation that we of to-day have ever known. It
is making itself felt inside and outside of our
churches. That this is being already widely
recognised is well illustrated by the following
significant words : * " The new appraisal of
Christ introduces us to a man of virile, ener-

* From an article entitled " Christ in the Twen-
tieth Century," by R. L. Jackson, in "The Biblical
World — A Journal of the Awakening Church," The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.
("The Biblical World" is a splendid periodical for
all who are desirous of keeping in closer touch with
the thought and with the agencies that are produc-
ing a more vital religion and a truer type of Chris-
tianity.)

234 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

getic character and powerful, arresting per-
sonality. We are face to face with a dynamic,
aggressive individual. Back of his soaring
ideality is an executive energy which ensures
his dreams eventual realisation in actual fact.
He handles the stuff of life with startling
originality and amazing artistry. He masters
and moves men with consummate ease.

" Now with the coming of the new concep-
tion of Christ there has also come a new con-
ception of Christian discipleship and a new
type of man to give it realisation . . . taking
up one's cross and following Christ means get-
ting underneath the burdens of the world and
bravely bearing them to the end. It means
heroic endurance of all that is involved in the
task of righting the wrongs of the wretched
and woeful. This is the meaning of following
Christ in the modern age, and there are in-
creasing numbers of strong, assertive men to
whom it is potently appealing. Men with red
blood, iron wills, keen, live minds, used to do-
ing big, vital things in the visible world, are
being gripped by the new conception of Chris-
tian discipleship, and organised Christianity is
witnessing a steady influx of them into its
ranks. . . . There is a deal of pretentious talk
in defence of the truth on the part of many re-
ligionists, but that which is so valorously de-
fended is not the truth but a certain body of

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 435

Opinions whose antiquity is a guaranty to
those holding them of their correspondence
with reality. Traditional opinion, transmitted
doctrine, are their ideas of truth. Far different
is the conception of the true champions of
truth. Truth to them is an expression of fact —
it is an ever-augmenting and expanding value,
advancing with the advancing intelligence and
character of the race. ... As men's experience
of the living God becomes richer and clearer,
religion adds its contribution to the value of
truth. What does all this involve but an open
receptive mind? Not a continual harking back
to the past but a continual turning toward the
future. . . .

" Finally the twentieth-century Christ is en-
listing the services of strong, aggressive men in
behalf of the higher spiritual life. We are wit-
nessing the amazing spectacle of men known
for their adamantine determination and dyna-
mic forcefulness in the business and profes-
sional world becoming earnest, unremitting
advocates of the life of the spirit. The spiritual
life has found a vantage ground in lives that
are being vigorously lived at the very focus of
the world's passionful life. . . . It is a call
to them to apply their strength and courage to
those high spiritual ends apart from which
human life is devoid of transcendent meaning ;
and their answer is the Yes of a life conse-

236 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

crated to the service of God and their fellow-
men."

It is the things of the mind and the spirit
that determine the worth of a man's or a
woman's life, and that determine also the de-
gree of his or her real happiness. The satis-
fying and abiding pleasures of life do not come
from complexing life but rather from simplify-
ing it, which enables one to live it more har-
moniously from the centre, as every law of
nature and every moral law demands that it
must be lived, rather than too fully in the
mere externalities.

No, life is much more interesting than mere
fences or fields or boards or bricks or railroad
ties or stocks or bonds, or even bonnets or
hats; and they who do not realise this are
among the most deluded people in the world —
however enormous they may wax in the size
of any of the former.

Again there is that very large number of
people, and of all ages, who are cheating them-
selves of the genuine pleasures of life through
their excesses in the pursuit of pleasure. It
must never be the abuse of anything good in
itself — the use of all natural gifts, functions,
and powers, but not the excessive use ; neither
asceticism on the one hand nor license or per-
verted use on the other. True enjoyment lies
always along that royal middle ground — the

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 237

use of all, but with the imperial hand of mas-
tery upon all. Otherwise there are always
heavy penalties to pay. The sharp edge of
appetite is always an essential to true enjoy-
ment ; when jaded or full to repletion the keen
sense of enjoyment is gone.

Happiness is the natural and the normal ; it
is one of the concomitants of righteousness,
which means merely living in the right rela-
tions with the laws of our being and the laws
of the universe about us. No clear-thinking
man or woman can be an apostle of despair.
Let us know that the best things are ours in
proportion as we order our lives in accordance
with the higher laws of our being. And
so pleasure comes not by seeking for it
directly and regularly — it is the outcome,
the natural outcome, of a well-regulated,
an alert, progressive, unself-centred and use-
ful life.

It cannot be otherwise than well that we find
the Kingdom while here; that we realise the
reign of the Spirit, which is the reign of God
in the mind and heart and life. It serves us
here ; and it may serve us better than we know,
when we are through here, and when what lies
beyond awaits us. With life thus under the
Divine rule we are able better to preserve the
true proportions of life. It brings with it in-
evitably a change of values.

238 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

There will be problems — ^there will always
be problems. As desire, however, leads us to
subordinate all things to this Kingdom of the
Divine rule, and as will keeps us true to that
desire, there come continually clearer percep-
tions through the leadings of the Spirit — the
Holy Spirit of which the Master spoke —
through which new insights and powers are
awakened within; and there comes a fortitude
of the soul that enables us to meet with calm-
ness, and effectively to deal with each problem,
as it comes.

There is a help in connection with the way
that the Master has shown us, that is of in-
estimable value and that we could use to far
better advantage than we do use it. It is the
method or the practice that he made use of so
frequently himself, whereby he was enabled to
sense and to find the way, which, when he
found, he revealed to us. So many times, we
are told, he went alone into the mountain to
pray — to commune with the Father. It is these
quiet times alone, in communion with our
Source, the Reality of our being, in communion
with the Father — my Father and your Father
— as Jesus taught us, which constitute effec-
tive and valuable prayer. Surely this is what
he meant when he said: But thou, when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou
hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 139

in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret
shall reward thee openly.

It is thus that the deeper perceptions of the
mind and spirit are awakened and developed.
It is the greatest privilege or gift that we
humans have. " In every man," said Tolstoy,
" there is the divine spark, the Spirit of God.
Prayer consists in calling forth in oneself
the divine element ... in evoking in oneself
the divine part of one's soul by throwing one-
self into it, entering it by communion with
Him of whom It is a part. And such prayer
is not an idle sentimentality and excitement
such as is produced by public prayer, with the
accompanying singing, images, illuminations,
and exhortations — but is always a help to life,
reforming and directing it."

A great secret of life, therefore, is to go
daily into the mountain to pray, and then to go
down to do each day aman's or a woman's work
in the world. As is revealed to us, so we can
reveal. As we receive, we can give, and we
must give — thus we serve. It is in this way
that life flows along in a satisfactory and a use-
ful manner here, and we are ready in a natural
and a normal w:ay for whatever lies be-
yond. Thus do all things work together for
good for those who love the Good — and
the way of the Christ is the highest that we
know.

240 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

The great Intelligence of the universe, work-
ing through the eternal Law of cause and
effect, so universal and so accurate, the un-
bounding and the everlasting love of the
Father as revealed by the Christ, make it im-
possible for us to think that this life that we
are in here, can be other than one phase, one
little day or period, of the eternal life that we
are living.

Character is cumulative, experience is cumu-
lative. As we sow, so surely shall we reap.
Spirit, which is Divine Being, is eternal.
Forms change, but the Life abides — and no
man liveth unto himself alone. God is Spirit
and God is Love. To know God is to live in
the spirit, and by service to show forth his love.
Therefore

" Let your attitude to all men be one of con-
tinual embrace.
So do, and death will not know where to find
you."

Yes, or again it may come as a kind old
mother, eternally longing for our highest good.
And when the fitful fever calms, and the mo-
ment comes, gently she will push open the door,
saying as she enters : Put off the old coat now,
and come. Instinctively you clutch to retain
it. No, she says, you leave it, you leave every-

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND 241

thing — you go. I will help put it off. Don't
fear. It is merely a change — you are the same.
There ! arise and come. Yonder a little group
is waiting for you; some have been waiting
long — so very long, they say. They have many
things to show you. See, they come. Stay,
I go.

And may it be that the Master will be pass-
ing, and stopping will say : " I told you many
things, but the best I have not told you for you
could not understand. You believed my words
and you have lived my truths. But my, how
you did stumble and fall at times! But every
time you got up and went on, true to the
Way — that is the only thing that really
counts. You have done well; you have done
better than I expected — come, our Father
awaits you. And you believed me, didn't you,
when I said: By this shall all men know
that ye are my disciples, if ye love one
another."

Sometimes the poet's vision perceives truths
and facts far in advance of our more slow-
moving intellect, with its methods of deduction
and experimentation. It has so happened many
times. It was Francis Thompson, who thus
made the Father speak:

" All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,

242 IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

But just that thou might'st seek it in My

arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at

home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come ! "